Janka is back! Having spent two months in Sierra Leone, Janka Nabay is now back in NYC and will be performing with the Bubu Gang at Palisades in Brooklyn on March 16, together with guest DJ sets by Awesome Tapes From Africa’s Brian Shimkovitz and Fade To Mind’s Rizzla. A few tickets are still available here.
If you remember from your high-school days, Bubu has its roots in the call-and response traditional music of pre-Islamic Sierra Leone, and was later repurposed into a religious music used to celebrate Iftar (the breaking of daytime fast during the holy month of Ramadan). In the mid-90’s, Janka was the first musician to record bubu music by reworking the traditional bamboo flutes and metal pipes with electronic instrumentation. Today, and with the backing of his Bubu Gang, Janka’s music has become a potent mind meld of off-kilter polyrhythmic folk tunes and high-octane psychedelia. (Now how can you resist that?!?) Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang’s En Yay Sah is available here!
Here is a gem from 2012 (that we’re sure you already have on the shelf there at home):
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