What’s in your headphones?
I’ve been a musician all my life, and spend a lot of my time binge-listening to albums and scouring the internet for new and exciting music. I used to have a blog where I shared my discoveries and my thoughts about them - but because it was tucked away in some dark corner of the internet, no one ever read it! For me, an album sounds even better when you’re listening to it with someone else, and great artists deserve to be heard, so I thought I’d start sharing some of my current favourites with the Steemit community. Wouldn’t it be cool if a lot of us were listening to the same album on a particular week?
I’ll start off with one of my personal favourites from the last few months:
William Onyeabor is one of the most enigmatic musicians I’ve discovered in recent years. During the late 70s/early 80s, he became famous in his home country of Nigeria for his signature blend of disco, funk, and Afrobeat, flecked with Hendrix-inspired psychedelia and pioneering synthesizer work, together with Onyeabor’s own eccentric and often bizarre lyrics.
One of the most mysterious things about Onyeabor is how he established himself in the first place. At the peak of his career, his recording studio was easily the best in Nigeria, if not the whole of Africa, and may even have surpassed many in other parts of the world. No one (apart from Onyeabor himself) is quite sure where the money for his state-of-the-art equipment (which included some of the first commercially available synthesisers in the world) came from, nor where he learned many of the groundbreaking production techniques he used. Rumours even abounded that he was funded by the Russians!
Onyeabor released nine albums over the same number of years, then quite abruptly close his studio and quit music (seemingly for good), citing his newly born-again Christianity as a reason. While popular in Nigeria, his music went largely undiscovered in the west until a recent VICE documentary on his work and the release of a ‘greatest hits’ album - Who Is William Onyeabor? - on David Byrne’s Luaka Bop label brought him into the international spotlight. Still living in Nigeria (he’s now a crowned High Chief and government-endorsed businessman), Onyeabor has steadfastly refused to comment on his music, other than to say "I only create music that will help the world.” An enigma indeed!
Listening to Onyeabor’s music shows just how ahead of his time he was - a great deal of it sounds a lot like the future-retro stylings of today’s alternative electronica (such as Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem), and it’s hard to believe that it was made decades ago - except, of course, for the telltale scratchiness and warmth of the dusty old vinyl records that were the only remaining copies of Onyeabor’s music - until now!
I hope you enjoy this album as much as I do! If you guys like this idea, I’ll try to post a new album or two every week so we can all listen together. Also, if you have any recommendations, please let me know what you’re listening to this week!