Occasionally there are times when it's imperative that you find out the name of that tune playing in the club or on the radio. Shazam has saved many the embarrassment of taking the lonely walk to the podium, but when Brian Shimkovitc is spinning his rag-bag of African treasures, there's very little that app can do for you.
Luckily Shimkovitc is a highly approachable chap with the demeanour of someone who delights in sharing the information on the precious material he works with.
His love of African music goes back a long way. In 2005, while studying ethnomusicology, he relocated to Ghana and concentrated his research on Hiplife, a fusion of highlife – a collision of big-band jazz and brass-band styles with several strains of African and Caribbean influence – and the production structures of hip-hop and rap.
Shimkovitc never passed up an opportunity to investigate the street-level and hybrid versions of the music he was there to research. Ghana has a diverse musical culture and all manner of styles cross-pollinate and coagulate.
By 2006, he was back in New York with enough material to start a blog called Awesome Tapes From Africa. It has since become the go-to place for lovers of African music at a time when interest has never been higher.
Very few artists have the magic in them as obviously as Ata Kak. Apart from the barely comprehensible mixture of styles and beats, the most obvious thing about the record is the way he sings.
It’s more scatting that singing, a sped-up rap attack of words that pour forth so fast it sounds like he’s bending the TWI language he uses to submit to his demands.
The way the album compels you to dance was no accident either. The dominance of house music’s stabbing chords is one of the most infectious parts. It turns out that Ata Kak had been living in Ontario at the turn of the 1990s absorbing the myriad sounds permeating the air and changing the course of music.
His glorious response sums up the liberated glee which producers were fuelling their adventures in sound at that time.
