Tropicology - Episode 98: African Symphony Series

Today we are returning to one of the classic theme buckets here at Tropicology… today will be another episode of African Symphony. These shows are symphonies primarily because the music does not fit into a neat bucket such as highlife, desert blues, afrobeat, etc. This is African variety; a sampler platter. However, I can point to some common threads in today’s musical lineup that do give this episode some underlying structure and continuity. 

In the first place, my symphony sets always feature music that is somewhat hard to categorize. Songs that fit neatly into genre buckets generally go into genre focused shows… symphonies are the concept I use to catch tracks with a broader range of influences than purely local music. The second sub-theme of today’s show is under-represented African countries… under- represented on Tropicology, at any rate. There are four countries in today’s set that are not frequently heard on the show. Two of those countries are under-represented for the simple reason that there is not a lot of recorded material from these countries, period. Those countries are Guinea Bissau and Gabon. The other two countries have produced plenty of records, they just haven’t broken through in my own mind and heart to become areas of focus for Tropicology. Those countries are Cameroon and Zambia. In the mic breaks today I’ll have some quick facts on each of these under-represented countries.