Tanzania II

8 years almost to the day after releasing his unique re-interpretation album of his field recordings made in the late 90's in Tanzania, Kink Gong is back with another volume of bushmen madness. Here’s what Kink Gong aka Laurent Jeanneau has to say about his end of millennium trip:

‘’My experience in Tanzania is now over 20 years and most of the so called remix was started in Tanzania and left unfin-ished, then eventually retouched in Vienna, Paris, Shanghai, Kunming, Dali or Vientiane. 20 years later I searched my Tanzanian files and rediscovered unfinished tracks which are being now refreshed on this new record.

Back to the early days of the XXI century, when I lost my health trying to survive with the HADZAs, the last bushmen in northern Tanzania. In 1999 James Stephenson from NYC invited me to join his Hadzas friends. I would leave the bush to rest in a place with enough food and electricity and start to edit, loop and work on the original recordings, to transform them into organic abstract compositions, the only instrument I had recorded a lot with the Hadzas was the malimba and I bought different malimbas in Arusha to take back with me to Europe, I used either the original recordings or me playing malimbas on some tracks and applied some electronic treatment to it, at that time I used Roland synths for some tracks.

The original recordings are related to scenes at night by the fire with the Hadzas, but also 3 different types of celebra-tions, Epeme Men was recorded on a moonless night with men and women singing and dancing in complete darkness in Mangola, an Hadza camp. Irawk Drum Under the Rain was recorded during daytime at a Multi ethnic gathering at the Franciscan Spanish catholic mission with a crowd dancing and singing under heavy rain while an Irawk large (and wet) drum was being played, Northern Tanzania. Makonde Island was recorded in southern Tanzania at the boarder with Mozambique and is a pure scene of trance taking place on an island where the Makonde fishermen off the coast of Mtwara, get wild, hitting plastic containers for the sound, drunk and stoned men and women are hysterically jumping and falling on each other, ending up with a few wounded.

Once again I'm responsible for this act of multicultural sabotage, but don’t forget that you can always listen to the original recordings on the Kink Gong recs collection. ‘’ Laurent Jeanneau, Berlin 2023