1974-1975

This release consttues the ent re discography of Hamad Kalkaba. Neglected for decades by all but the most devoted collectors of Afro music, Hamad Kalkaba and the Golden Sounds at long last gathers together the body of work of one of Cameroon’s forgot en geniuses.

Unlike many musicians who emerged from nowhere, recorded a few singles and vanished again, Kalkaba hadn’t disappeared. Far from it. He was a distnguished public fgure, a retred Colonel in the army of Cameroon, and a former member of Cameroon’s Olympic Selecton Commitee. When we tracked him down he was serving as president of the Confederaton of African Athletcs. And although Kalkaba’s job kept him busy, and he seemed initally dismissive of the music he’d made as a young man, he turned out to bean enthusiastcally in this project.

He arranged interviews, helped fll in the blanks and, when we fnally met him in Yaound in 2016, provided us with photographs, lyric sheets and notes. During the interview Kalkaba explained how the songs recorded in the mid 1970s were part of a movement, a movement init ated by musicians from all around Cameroon who, with the help of keyboards, drum kits and electric guitars, had started to modernize the tradit onal rhythms of their regions. For Kalkaba it was no dif erent and backed by his band the Golden Sounds, devoted himself to the promot on of the sounds of northern Cameroon. One of the aims of Analog Africa is to showcase the colorful diversity of styles that exist in Africa and its diaspora and today we are very proud to be able to give these Gandjal tunes their frst worldwide release.