With all of a humanity reduced to a genome, who’d a thunk there’d be some
sweet, folksy music being made in a remote corner of the world that almost no
one had heard of until youtube came along?
This is a whole community of musicians from the heart of Africa playing guitar
in a way most of us have never seen or thought possible—unless you happened to
be following a handful of viral internet videos. And if you were and happened to
read the comments below the videos, you would have seen the question: “Where
can I buy this music?” The answer is: on Piranha Records on 27 April 2018 !
Head of The Vital Record, David Aglow, had no idea what he was in for when, back
in 2009, he received an email from a friend with a youtube link. He thought it
might be spam and almost didn’t bother to click. But he did and discovered a
treasure trove of
“Botswana Music Guitar.” Played in an eccentric style with a depth of
expression rivaling
any genre of music, this is folk from the dusty outskirts of the Kalahari
Desert—a community of African country blues masters with a totally original
technique. The left hand reaches up and over the neck of the guitar, instead of
from behind and underneath. David Aglow was so enthralled that —long story
short — he searched for and found the person who recorded and posted these
clips — Johannes Vollebregt — aka Bokete7 and proposed giving the artists
a proper release. Then he found the artists and recorded and recorded and
recorded.
This is a case of music lovers, field recordists and publishers joining forces
to shed some
light on a community of musicians more than worthy of international
attention.
