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Free download remix to celebrate the release of the debut album from The West Bridge Band-Kibera Esbera (Kenya) on Electric Cowbell Records for Record Store Day 2015. Our friend Aillcara 2743 built a vibe-continuum off of the track "Papa" and we're certain it should make you happy. The full-length album is only available as a limited-edition release and we encourage you to make every day of the year Record Store Day!
Hailing from the Luyha Tribe, The West Bridge Band is a four-man band led by Wamalwa Lusweti, who builds and plays the Litungu, a nine-stringed instrument that he invented.
They live on the edge of KIbera, the world’s largest “slum” where open sewage runs along the streets and one must be careful not to be struck by “flying toilets” (the practice of flinging one’s own waste asunder in a plastic bag after dark as a means of disposal). Over 2-million people reside there. With the population swelling daily, the district stands in sharp contrast to the tourists who visit Nairobi to go on luxury safari outings.
The record was recorded in a tiny single room, where the band leader’s entire family lives. It is smaller than the interior of many American cars, and without a kitchen or bathroom. They jerryrig electricity illegally through a ramshackle of wires cut into the city’s grid.
At night, Boda Boda motorcycle-taxi boys high from chewing Mira weed, often string rope across intersections, fishing other riders from their bikes and then robbing the fallen and— in many cases— killing them for sport.
By day, the band plays traditional Kenyan music from other tribes to entertain tourists. They change costumes for the different numbers with few in the audience seeming to realize that it is the same performers over and over again rather than a rotating cast of ethnic characters.
In the off hours, the musicians live a grim reality, hawking the instruments they build and penning songs such as “The Rich” and “Sadness."
Aillacara 2743 is the address of Orlando Diaz Corvalan's family home in Santiago, Chile. It's the name he chose to represent the Latin side of his creative endevours. Born into a family of engaged musicians, with a dissident father who escaped Chile under the Pinochet reign, his family took political refugee in France, where Orlando grew up. His musical productions reflect an uprooted Latin culture that he keeps alive through his music. He composes, writes, produces, plays and programs the main instruments in his songs. As a DJ, he draws inspiration from his collection of Latin and Cuban vinyl from the 60s and 70s. Areito, Sound Triangle, Fuentes, Sono Radio, Inca, Tico, Tropical, Mericana are names that rotate on his turntables regularly. Andean rhythms, Afro-Cuban and Latin funk, Colombian cumbia, Argentinian jazz are some of the influences that lend color to his productions. Also know as Medline and Electroom Acoostap, Orlando also produces jazz, funk and hip hop for many labels worldwide.
- Genre
- West Bridge Band,