Various – Bulayo: Guitar Songs From Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia & DR Congo

Acoustic guitar masters from East and Central Africa, an expansion of Mississippi’s beloved African Guitar Box project.In 1979 and 1980, a young British-Kenyan musician named John Low hit the road to learn finger-style guitar from his heroes. He traveled across Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, and Zambia. He visited giants like Jean-Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo, and Emmanuel Mulemena, whose records sold hundreds of thousands of copies across the continent in the 1950s and 60s. He also documented brilliant but previously under-recorded artists like Tanzania’s Francis Kitime and Kenya’s Mtonga Wanganangu.Regardless of status, John approached each artist humbly, as a student. He recorded in homes, village squares, and watering holes. The sessions are intimate and casual, the artists at ease. It’s a transporting and profound listening experience – children laughing, glasses clinking, the thump of the Marantz cassette deck, and John’s single mic moving through space,