The Syliphone Years

Seminal African pop combo the Bembeya Jazz National were unusual for their time; a state-sponsored band closely associated with Guinea’s idealistic socialist regime of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the Bembeya Jazz National set out to create a Guinean folk idiom out of whole cloth, drawing on Cuban Son ballads, Rhumba rhythms and West African highlife, and helmed by the incomparable guitar work of Sekou Diabate, The Bembeya Jazz National created gently propulsive, dreamy dance music that sounds like little else being made in Africa at the time. While Fela Kuti’s relentless rhythms would soon sweep the African continent, the Bembeya Jazz National specialized in developing slow-burning musical themes that subtly teased out the close kinship between African and Latin rhythms to often intoxicating effect. The Syliphone Years is, simply put, the definitive collection of the Bembeya Jazz National’s music and should be in the library of anyone with an interest in the history of African popular music.