Nyege Nyege has teamed up with the MBE label to publish a limited edition magazine called Nyege Nyege Archive and accompany it with a tape of field recordings made in Africa, mainly in the 1950s and 1960s.
Between February 27th and March 23rd 2017, photographer Stéphane Charpentier and his partner sound artist and field recordist Alyssa Moxley joined Arlen Dilsizian (Moroto Hvy Ind) and Don Zilla on one of the many field recording projects that the Nyege Nyege crew frequently undertook into the Uganda country side. On that trip the focus was to record a specific set of troupes based in Eastern Uganda, primarily the Kadodi percussion troupes of the Bagisu tribe around the town of Mbale and the various Amadinda ensembles of the Busoga tribe around the town of Iganga. The second half of the trip saw them return to North Western Uganda working with the dizzying constellation of Acholi troupes that dot the landscape around the towns of Gulu and Lira.
Arlen Dilsizian explains that “The mix is a sort of the subconscious behind Nyege Nyege Tapes. Whilst Sub Saharan Africa prefigured abstraction in art centuries before Europe, the same can be said for music. Nyege Nyege Tapes always strives to draw connections between contemporary electronic micro scenes and traditional forms of music on the continent, as in our Kadodi release, releases on traditional Luo music and many other future releases that juxtapose modern day forms and their older cousins.”
For the DJ, this mix “tries to explore similar territory from a different angle. I have tried to select field recordings that puts ‘traditional’ or ‘classical’ music from Sub Saharan Africa in direct conversation with modern avant-garde compositions of the same era, especially 1950’s – 1970’s electronic compositions, anything from Jocy De Oliveira, John Cage, Gruppo D’Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, Steve Reich etc.”
Order Nyege Nyege Archive via Bandcamp.
