Re-issued music from far-flung places.

ether

Well-known member
Seems like a bit of a a golden era at the moment for official releases anyway. Not really sure why, lots of kids I meet seem to be getting in to Fela. Prob helped a bit by Nas sampling Mulatu Astatke, William Onyeabors success, ethnomusicy blogs, and resurgence of digging and vinyl culture.
 

PadaEtc

Emperor Penguin
It ties into the whole disco / NYC loft revival thing doesn't it.

Fela had the musical, there's a new documentary out and all his releases are being reissued, permanently. So that might explain that.
 

Trillhouse

Well-known member
It's just another collector trend isn't it?

They rinsed most of what the US, Latin America and Europe had to offer a long time ago. They've done Soviet era Russia, India and other parts of Asia, then moved on to the genres of the American continent previously ignored and rinsing/rescuing all the vinyl in Africa.

Bloggers and the collector's thirst for rares have definitely fuelled a revival, but I don't know about this resurgence in vinyl collecting, that's something that always seem to be thrown around every few years or so, I don't know how true it is.
 
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trza

Well-known member
Fela has been continuously reissued and remastered and rereleased since just after he died. I remember going to suburban big box stores in the nineties and seeing two fela albums combined on one cd for ten dollars. Dance producers have made an endless flow of new re-edits and remixes. A lot of the people buying the records would probably rather die than pay attention to musical theatre or broadway.

The sense of discovery is one of the biggest emotions in music these days. It doesn't matter how many people have already known about something, if its new to you then its the greatest thing ever.
 

PadaEtc

Emperor Penguin
They CD reissues are as common as muck yes, but until the last few RSDs the vinyl version weren't exactly in abundance I don't think. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The Broadway musical was hardly aimed at the Wicked / Lion King crowd surely. And regardless its popularity may have meant that his work seeped into popular consciousness and as such received more coverage elsewhere.

Regardless, his music is fantastic.
 

staypuft

bwah bwah
The sense of discovery is one of the biggest emotions in music these days. It doesn't matter how many people have already known about something, if its new to you then its the greatest thing ever.

I think this is great for reissue compilations and such. Some music is truly hard to come by, especially in the digital age, where the concept of crate digging is fairly abstract. It's nice to have a familiar face (Finder's Keepers, Death Waltz, Soul Jazz, etc) guiding us to lost gems.

For me, it gets problematic when this principle is applied to current music movements. I'm sure getting older has something to do with it, but I'm appalled at how much new house/techno music is merely an exercise in emulating the sounds of the 90s. Trouble is, it was a new development back then. Now, people are disturbingly content with compromising an original musical statement, simply because of the coupling of novelty and convenience.

Fortunately I can take the above with a grain of salt, as I've become jaded on being jaded. There's always something great out there...
 

trza

Well-known member
This gets released on a Soundway comp:

Producer from Glasgoa gets a hold of the sample:

the cycle continues.
 
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