Awesome Tapes for Everywhere

Have cassette, will travel....

I was in Chicago’s Dusty Groove record store last month - anytime I’m in Chicago, that’s the first place I go now that the Jazz Record Mart has closed. While I was there, I heard a killer song. I Shazamed it and found Yemiasleks Fikir by Hailu Mergia and the Walias, recorded in 1977 and reissued by Awesome Tapes From Africa in 2014. Later on, I researched the label and got lost in the strange backwaters of cassette tapes on that Big River called Jazz.

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I remember exactly where and when I made my first mix - or what is now called a playlist. I didn’t make it the find-a-song and “Add to a Playlist” way. I made it the old-fashioned way: pick out your vinyl, play it on the turntable, drop the needle on the track, hit “record” on the cassette deck, hit “pause” when the song finishes, and repeat with the next record. It took a long time - hours to fill both sides of a 90-minute tape. The whole thing was an act of love, and I still have the first two cassette tape mixes I ever made: evidently what I thought were “some hip tunes” and all my favorite John Mayall tunes:

These are monsters. I played the bejesus out of them on my car’s tape player during my summer of 1984 trip across the country, which consisted of three legs: Brooklyn to Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Benning to Fort Sill in Lawton, Oklahoma; and Lawton to Monterey, California. I kept them with my other favorite tapes and mixes in this wine box:

That was a fun, itinerant time in my life, and cassette tapes kept me in the tunes I liked most - commercial-free!

I left Brooklyn in about June or July of 1984, bound for Airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia. After I got my jump wings, it was off to Lawton, Oklahoma, via the Big Easy.

New Orleans was a blast. Besides Tipitina’s, what I remember most about New Orleans was the cool gondola across the Mississippi River or the MART (Mississippi Aerial River Transit):

I happened to roll into town during the World’s Fair. The gondola ride was a big attraction, and the fair was a lot of fun. After a quick stay in New Orleans, I drove up to Shreveport, over to Dallas, and then north across the Red River into Oklahoma.

When I got to Lawton, I listened to a lot of country music. My friend Jeep and I drove down to Nocona, Texas to get our cowboy boots at the boot factory (now a brewery and baseball glove factory).

Then, we hit the honky-tonks between Lawton and Wichita Falls, where we learned how to two-step. Most of us, anyway.

One friend took a trip down to Jamaica on a long weekend and came back with a homemade Reggae cassette mix filled with mostly instrumental reggae tracks. At the time, I did have one Reggae cassette in my wine box: Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Legend:

Based on one song I loved, Waiting in Vain, I bought it at the Tower in Greenwich Village just before I left for Georgia. Outside of a few Bob Marley songs, my Reggae knowledge then was limited. However, when I heard my friend’s Reggae tape, I became an instant fan of this new music - new to me anyway. Most of it was already over ten years old.

As I recall now, my friend’s Reggae tape was filled with instrumental songs and versions I’d put in the realm of Burning Spears’ Joe Frazier, Sound Dimensions’ Full Up, and Jackie Mittoo’s Totally Together.

I wish I knew the specifics of how he came about that tape. I’m sure there’s a great story behind it. Did he buy it? Did someone he met mix it for him? In the end, I kick myself for not getting the scoop and even more for not getting a copy made (remember - not point click) before we went our separate ways.

After a few months in Lawton, I hit the road for Monterey, California. I drove over to LA and then up the coast on Highway 1 to Monterey, where I rented an apartment and started Dutch classes at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey. As I look back now, it’s interesting to think that when I got to California, I was primarily a blues guy, but when I left for Europe at the start of 1985, I was just starting down that Big River called Jazz.

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Let’s get back to Awesome Tapes From Africa, which Brian Shimkovitz started in 2006, shortly after moving to New York City after doing ethnomusicology fieldwork in Ghana on a Fulbright scholarship. Shimkovitz, who is now based in LA, says he created the blog and then later his record label to share what he found in Africa and as “basically a way to stay sane on the weekends as I was doing my New York City job.” He goes on to say:

I was always a tape guy, even before I visited West Africa. But when I went to Ghana the first time I saw that the widest selection of music was available on tape. So I started going to the shops and areas of the big outdoor markets where tapes are sold…. I was sending packages home to Chicago so I could collect as much as possible while I was there.

Over the years, his blog has grown into a trove of hundreds of tape recordings, available for listening or download, sortable by decade or region and meant as a kind of open library for the music of Africa and various places.

Moving from tape blogger to record label head was a natural progression for him. The first Awesome Tapes From Africa reissue was La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol. 3 by Malian singer Na Hawa Doumbia. Here’s that tape:

Shimkovitz released it on his label in 2011. He tries to keep everything that Awesome Tapes From Africa puts out as close as possible to how he found it. The blog and label never altered the artwork to appear more contemporary. He points out:

I like presenting it as it is, letting the music speak for itself if you pardon the cliche. But I think it’s important to showcase the art as it was made, and not reinterpret it through my American perspective. That type of stuff is really dangerous when you’re a non-African working with African music I think personally, ethically, and creatively… I love using the original cover art because it’s so fun and so interesting, so characteristic of what people’s artistic sensibilities were in that scene of that place.

This creates a nice sense of discovery for customers. This unique and honest ethos, one that drives Shimkovitz to leave his findings how he found them, contributes to his label’s success, for both himself and, more importantly, for the artists it champions.

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As we discovered last week with Taureg guitar music, since its introduction in the early 1980s, cassette technology revolutionized music distribution in Africa and all over the world. The popularity of cassette tapes coincided with an explosion of piracy and created a situation where anyone could hear recorded music of all kinds through the ubiquitous stereos found in markets, shops, and vehicles. The DIY nature, portability, and durability of cassette tapes made them the perfect medium for musicians to spread their music - an opportunity that never existed in the vinyl world.

Jess Sah Bi & Peter One’s Our Garden Need Its Flowers is an example of one of those cassettes that Shimkovitz found in Africa and reissued in 2018. From that album, here is Solutions:

The success of Awesome Tapes From Africa inspired the creation of more labels. For example, in 2010, Christopher Kirkley started Sahel Sounds. He focused on field and studio recordings of traditional and modern popular music in the Sahel regions of Mauritania, Senegal, and Mali.

Here’s one more for the road. Before we leave Africa, I’d like to share another guitar piece from Mali, recorded on the Sahel Sounds label. This is Alkibar Gignor playing Kaounare, from a compilation album Laila Je T’Aime: Guitar Music From the Western Sahel, released in 2012:

This sounds more like Old-Time Appalachian Bluegrass music than Mali desert music….

Cassette tapes equal freedom! That’s the way I feel about them. They allowed me to combine my favorite songs into one cassette tape and play it on the move, whether in my car, on a boom box, or on a walkman. I was no longer shackled to my room. I was able to control what I wanted to hear pretty much wherever I wanted to hear it. As I look at some of the old cassettes around the house, like this Sun Ra tape:

…they are well-traveled, artistic expressions made with love. And they all have a story to tell.

Next week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles into the waters down in Jamaica and explore Jazz and Reggae.

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Also, find my playlist on Spotify: From Fred Astaire to Sun Ra.

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Until then, keep on walking….