It's almost hard to remember when times were good. When there wasn't a recent or looming economic/humanitarian/geological/nuclear/political/environmental crisis every time you turn on the news or read a paper. Like 1986, for example.
Well, in a cursory internet search, I see that 1986 wasn't without it's own crises and tragedies. But I was 25 years younger, and perhaps wasn't as tuned in to everything going on around me as I am now. But, if nothing else, 1986 was the year that Rhymin' Paul Simon turned out the Graceland album.
The Music Intelligensia at the time - you know, hipsters who listen to bootleg recordings of Dead Can Dance rehearsing backstage with the Gyuto Monks - derided the album as wholesale theft of the African culture, and Simon for breaking a cultural boycott on the apartheid regime in power at the time. But this album held a lot of new sounds for me at that time. Looking back, I can clearly see Graceland as a gateway album, paving the way and priming my ears for Weather Report, Romantic Warrior, Henry Threadgill, and John Zorn.
Many years later, I was fortunate to hear Extra Golden.
Extra Golden is, as Wikipedia puts it so succinctly, "a musical ensemble founded by two Americans and one Kenyan." To be honest, I don't know a lot about this group. What I do know is that they create music which, for me, is a direct descendant of the Graceland album. And because of that, my ears were ready and, I think, starved for this sound again.
I'll let you do the research if you like. For me, the music speaks volumes.
Extra Golden - Ok-Oyot System
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