- LP Strictly Limited to 2000 copies.
- The vinyl is pressed on 180 High Quality Virgin Vinyl
- Gatefold contains previously unseen pictures and a detailed biography
- All the music was licensed directly from the various composers
- Includes unlimited streaming of De Bassari Togo (Limited Edition) via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
In 1972, Orchestre Abass released two incredible singles on Polydor. These records - featuring Samarin Banza, Haka Dunia and other afrofunk masterpieces - were powerful enough to knock any music head out, but it wasn’t until the discovery of some unreleased material by the band that the seeds for this project were planted.
It all happened in 2008 in Ghana. I was going through some tapes that had previously been the property of PolyGram one of the major record companies based in west Africa. In the late 80s political instability and curfews had paralysed the music industry forcing Polygram to close their Ghanaian subsidiaries leaving all of their recordings behind. These recordings had been packed in boxes and left vegetating in an Accra warehouse for three decades until I came along. To my surprise all of the tapes looked unharmed and I was particularly relieved to hear that the Orchestre Abass tape was in an excellent state of condition. I began fiddling around with the idea of releasing an album of the band and that plan got an additional boost with le “coup de grace” which had landed in the form of an ultra rare tune called Honam discovered in Sotoboua, a small northern Togolese town in the middle of nowhere. That find completed this selection.
Track listing:
;ul:
A1 Haka Dunia 4:05
A2 Soo Soo Mungha 3:25
A3 Ekule Nugble Nu 1:44
B1 Shamarin Banza 4:08
B2 Honam 3:58
B3 Kissagui 4:15
de bassari togo