From Nigeria: Mary Afi Usuah ‎– African Woman

Mary Afi Usuah trained as an a opera singer at the prestigious St Cecilia Academy in Rome and spent 13 years touring Europe with artists like Duke Ellington and Deep Purple. She matched vocal chops with Robert Plant performing with Led Zeppelin and blew away the top names on the Lagos scene when she returned to Nigeria. She also broke a few hearts with her killer smile, if some accounts are to be believed. African Woman marshals these experiences into an exceptionally powerful and diverse album. From the Tina Turner stomp of ‘What’s A Woman To Do’, to the Aretha-style musings of the title track, Mary takes everything she learned on the road to tell her story about her continent in a distinctly African manner. The boys from Akwassa were on hand to ensure that everything was kept extra tight and funky. Mary Afi Usuah only released two albums but she is undeniably one of the greatest female singers the African continent has produced. African Woman serves as her legacy, along with the remarkable number of Nigerian female singers she mentored and inspired. - Peter Moore

"I met MARY AFI USUAH in 1979 while I was the lead singer with TEE MAC COLLECTION. We were based at SURULERE NIGHT CLUB in Lagos, Nigeria. She came in from Calabar in the Cross river state. She was a beauty with her afro hair and had a very strong voice and very powerful on stage. Her performance was electrifying. She did a lot of shows with us and together we got the crowd rocking. A very dark complexioned lady, she was full of life and love. Her smiles would sweep any man off her feet instantly and I immediately recognized a talent that go all over the world. Her music is a blend of African rhythms, soul and funk with heavy bassline. I am glad to let you know that the vynil you have in your hands now contains music that will tickle all ears for a very long time. Happy listening."

Steve Black

Tracklist
 
A1. Tell Me Now
A2. Kam Fat Owo (Mbata)
A3. What's A Woman To Do
A4. African Woman
B1. Sweet Elijah
B2. Spread More Love
B3. Our Generation (Ode To Our Nation)
B4. Tenkim Kpoho

Voodoofunk publishes: Mary Afi Usuah - Ekpenyong Abasi

Voodoo Funk present a heady trip into Nigerian funk, blowing the cobwebs off a genuine rarity among a 21st century resurgence for 70s African albums. Spearheaded of course by Fela Kuti's posthumous uprising, afrobeat and West African funk is becoming increasingly sought after; appreciation for the period has even swelled to a scale that warrants its own Sugarman or rarity-within-rarity, manifested in the elusive figure of William Onyeabor. There comes a point when you question the selection processes of these record labels, as easy as it seems to dip into this avalanche of dusty, tropical heat-warped LPs and pluck out something brilliant.

But Mary Afi Usuah is definitely the product of an arduous and determined trawl. A rare female voice on the circuit, Afi Usuah's career focused more on promoting the arts in post-civil war Nigeria than a personal output. Having been musically trained in London, Rome and Naples, her thirteen year tour of Europe saw her support acts as diverse as Led Zeppelin, Duke Ellington and Deep Purple while she experimented in styles ranging from jazz and rock to opera. She then recorded three solo albums - none of them well known beyond a generation of Nigerians - before taking a post at Lagos' Ministry of Information and Culture. Afi Usuah died in February 2013, tragically short of this re-release of her 1975 debut album, Ekpenyong Abasi.

A keen guitarist from a young age, Afi Usuah's advances as a female composer/songwriter made her career unusual at the time. A similar exception came with the criminally underrated Lijadu Sisters, a twin duet who created dreamy soundscapes by singing in perfect synchronisation; the same effect is made on Ekpenyong Abasi, with Afi Usuah's vocals reverbing into infinity against an echo of backing singers. She possesses the sultriness of the great African American jazz singers, complemented on most tracks by the kind of slow, dark funk that Sly & The Family Stone did best. All members of the unimaginatively named 'Cultural Centre Band' were unaccredited, but trumpeter and bandleader Dan 'Satch' Asuquo has since been acknowledged as the main creative force.

Dan Satch was known in Nigeria for integrating traditional idioms into a popular music context, resulting in several experimental singles. Ekpenyong Abasi was an album-length extension of those experiments, with Afi Usuah sharing her desire to promote indigenous Nigerian art in all its forms. Stop-start rhythms and wild, untamed drum whacks dominate on 'Mma Amo Mbo', a track which speeds to a heart-attack inducing pace; in terms of Afi Usuah and Dan Satch's traditional awakening, this is probably the standout moment.

Ekpenyong Abasi possesses a raw power that must have made it leap out of the aforementioned stack of heat warped LP's presented to the music archaeologists. This is hardly the high energy sweaty dance party in which afrobeat thrived, but rather a soporific ritual that transports the listener away from Lagos and into Afi Usuah's home territory of Cross River State. "Art isn't something [Nigerians] view as important", Afi Usuah said of her philosophy, "but it's our arts that have exported the most positive image of Nigeria. It's the arts that show us who we really are".

thequietus.com 

 

Tracklist

A1	Ima Mma Uyem
A2	From Me To You
A3	Afia Mma (Hulalah)
A4	Mma Ama Mbo
B1	Ekpe
B2	Call Me Your Lover
B3	Ekpenyong Abasi
B4	Ebre Mbre