Album review

Osibisa

The Very Best of / Oseh Yee

added: 7 Feb 2010 // release date: 7 Feb 2010 // label: Cadiz
reviewer: Andy Snipper

Memories can sometimes cloud our judgement – bands that we remembered as being towering examples of their art can be reduced to snivelling and desperately ordinary in the light of day. Osibisa is one band that I remembered for being a truly original sound and the progenitors of the African music explosion that we are enjoying in the west today. Listening to their best of I was half expecting them to sound a little contrived and derivative but thirty seconds into ‘Sunshine Day’ had the old smile on my face and my butt twitching to the rhythms and the jazzy tones – bloody hell they were good!
Their music has always been a meld of Africa (in this case Ghana) and western rock/jazz (which was in turn heavily influenced by music from Mali and N. Africa – aka Blues) but the feature that made them stand out was the sheer originality of their music. ‘Music For Gong Gong’ has huge rhythms, melodic horns and a rolling organ sound but I cannot think of any other band that made anything similar or who got you dancing no matter what your ethnic or cultural origins – this is music from the heart and soul of the band who are playing it and nearly forty years after it was made it still has the power and majesty of its original release.
The hits are all here – ‘Welcome Home’, ‘Woyaya’, ‘Fire’ as well as the album tracks that were so much a part of the live set – ‘The Dawn’ and ‘Ayiko Bia’ – as well as a stirring version of ‘Nkosi Sikeleli Africa’ but there are also a few ‘cheesy’ items such as ‘Coffee Song’ or ‘Dance The Body Music’ that stem from late seventies or early eighties and even then are no worse than a lot of other disco music and a lot better than most. But these are easy to ride through to standout numbers like ‘Uhuru’ or ‘Kilele’.

So now we come forward many years and Osibisa release a new album – ‘Osee Yee’. They still feature Teddy Oseh, Mac Tontoh and Greg Kofi Brown and the drums and the pounding rhythms are still there as well as the chants and the joy that their music always contained.
The sound is still recognisably Osibisa and the album has a fine overall feel and, thankfully, the band still sound as though their greatest source of enjoyment is playing this marvellous music.
There is a little more guitar than organ in the sound now and the band definitely sound more mature but the music is definitely 2010 vintage rather than 1970, The horns are still powerful and the vocal blasts are still as deep and stirring as ever but there is an almost latin feeling to some of the rhythms – think Mongo Santamaria rather than Gloria Estefan – that makes the music even more sinuous and danceable than their earliest albums.
‘Watusi’ and ‘Life Time’ have a dark African feel and the title track is a delightful piece of fusion jazz with great chants and a soulful feel. I would dearly love to know who gets the royalties for their version of ‘My Sweet Lord’ but I was happy when it gave way to ‘Boyengya’ as that had a far more ‘Osibisa’ sound.

‘Osee Yee’ is much, much better than I was expecting, it sounds like a truly revitalised Osibisa rather than a warmed over cabaret act, which is what I was afraid of, and will be one of the albums that finds its way into my library of music I listen to for pleasure alone.

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