In the Autumn of 2014 a corner of an empty tv studio in Blantyre in Malawi filled up with recording equipment from Norway. Georg Buljo was invited there to work with the band Takula. Now they are ready to give their Norwegian debut. As a guest artist they have a figure none other than the celebrated South African musician Ray Phiri, known among other things for his collaboration with Paul Simon.
Takula consists of four young, Malawian musicians. They discovered a goldmine of new repertoire when they started working with old recordings of Malawian traditional music. Georg Buljo has himself unearthed many treasures which stem from his own Samí background. In collaboration with Takula he adds new impulses to the african musical landscape.
- Georg Buljo, with his background as composer, arranger and producer was the perfect musician for this project. Buljo has worked a great deal with musical boundaries between tradition and modernism and is highly experienced in handling combinations of traditional melodies and instruments, and a genuine unadorned aural landscape with modern instruments, states producer Sigbjørn Nedland.
On the occasion of this festival concert we also welcome the singer and guitarist sanger Ray Phiri, one of the most central artists in the South African scene over the last decades. Together with the group Stimela he has recorded several records which have been best sellers in his homeland. In 1986 he was Paul Simon´s chief collaborator on the classic album "Graceland".
The small, Norwegian cultural enterprise Nedland Kultur in cooperation with the Norwegian Embassy in Malawi set up a digitalisation project, the aim of which was to save the national cultural archive stored at Radio Malawi. The Malawian music mileau has been shaped by foreign influences, whilst the indigenous music is not widely available. Sadly this is the case in a number of african countries.
- Since a number of african countries have no recording studios, entire musical histories are sitting on tapes in radio stations. Tapes don´t last forever and we save this music for posterity through digitalisation, states Nedland, who recently was awarded the King´s Service Medal for his services to global music.
- This process was set in motion after a powerful meeting in Blantyre which convinced all concerned that one short studio session was simply not enough. The result was a trully inspired album and a group of musicians that were bursting to get on stage, beams Nedland.
Look forward to fresh, pulsating, catchy and melodic african music!