Roots Archives Forum

@samboerou

glad someone agrees with me!

This album should be regarded as a historic document on the rise and fall of the black ark studio. At least it is a real black ark release. (Collecting all Lee Perry stuff is not worthwhile, collecting all black ark recordings is).

I used to know the guy who released this album on the jolie zaire label very well (lost contact as he moved to the UK). He was having a record shop called Tropical Sounds in Liege Belgium. One day he turned on this compact cassette with the African Roots recording and told me he got the tape from a friend in the Matonge district in Brussels (there is a very lively soukous scene over there). He paid a visit to Perry in Suisse, made some pictures in his garden for the album sleeve and released this stuff.

At a later point he started working with guys from Runn (Maastricht located nearby Liege) and released the recordings again on compact disk. Interestingly he added the Robert Palmer recording (he was having the largest upsetter record collection I have ever seen). Not only was he collecting records but he also had excellent contacts with guys like Lee Perry, Yabby You, Carlton Jackson (from History 12" to be found on Open the Gate), Dr. Alimantado, etc...
Thanks to his contacts I was able to meet all of these guys in person (what really impressed me, 20 years later I am still checking out their music).

Without this release it is hard to understand when the decline of Black Ark started. At a certain point sound quality deteriorated. With the Heart of the Congo's and Return of the Superape album the deterioration of studio equipment provided still a mystical sound. African Roots is getting over the edge; it's like the high end has been completely topped off and sound got drowned in midband echo.

Only in the nineties the whole Perry thing got properly documented (David Katz, Steve Barrow, Veal). Thanks to enthusiast in the 80's still lots of stuff got preserved (musical archeology / in search of the lost mastertapes). Roots fanatics now history is important, and this record should be appreciated from that respect.

I am wondering how the congolese artists are doing at the moment. What happened to them after the recording...

Doesn't anyone check out my Scratch website any more?

http://www.upsetter.net/scratch/disco/index.htm

AFRICAN ROOTS - SEKE MOLENGA AND KALO KAWONGOLO

CD: Trojan 06076-80552-2
2006

1. African Roots
2. Bad Food
3. Muto Ya Motema
4. Mengieb
5. Nakoya
6. Guipimbu Gienn
7. Nzube
8. Masanga
9. African Freedom - Brother Hood

This is an album with a great story behind it. In 1977, a would-be reggae promoter brought some fellows from Zaire to Jamaica in hopes of creating a new African reggae sound. Apparently she abandoned the two Africans soon after they arrived in Jamaica and left them stranded on the mean streets of Kingston. Not speaking any English, they had to beg for money and food to survive. Eventually, they found themselves at Lee Perry's house and somehow communicated their desperate story. Perry took their arrival as a sign: Jah himself had sent these men from Africa to make a connection with the Black Ark. Soon after, the pair were in the Ark recording the songs that make up African Roots. Originally eight songs were recorded and a rough mix of an album (entitled Monama) was sent to Island records. Island ultimately shelved the album, and those tapes remain in the vaults until today. In 1979, six tracks were released on the French Sonafric label as Seke Molenga And Kalo Kawongolo; the Dutch label RUNN released a collection with the same six tracks called From The Heart Of The Congo in 1991. There has never been a complete release of this material until this excellent Trojan release. It's an incredible and ground breaking collaboration, done long before anyone was attempting such a crossover, and even before reggae had become popular in Africa. The result was a thick, swirling, tribal groove that is unique in the Lee Perry catalogue. Highlights include "African Roots" and "Muto Ya Motema". The only minor complaint is the tacking on of "African Freedom" by Brother Hood - with music this unique, Trojan would have been better off simply presenting the original tunes.

... i'm totally with rootsmanxy on this;
highclass Upsetter sounds that will withstand the tooth of time with verve, as all Ark material will btw.
to be honoust it didn't occur to me and still doesnt, the
sound is so bad ... can play it LOUD and feel chills hearing the deep Ark sounds ... and lovely too they managed to squeeze out another two tracks on that trojan release ... the runn release was a drama with added stuff out of context (edit) and sped up tape !

... i see now they added African Freedom, now that's
a flunky ... it's not even a Black Ark track !

I've alway wondered about this issue of adding out of place and out of time 'bonus' tracks to reissues - occasionally it turns up some gems, but mostly it seems to not work at all.
Maybe I should write a longwinded post about this!

Anyway with this thread I have a pretty good answer to my question (2 years ago)!

http://www.roots-archives.com/forum/rea ... 2#msg-8752

Many thanks to all contributors