Hi friends,

This month, we’re sharing an EP of country music by the mysterious Pinky Tex AND an album of gorgeous African acoustic guitar songs recorded by John Low.

In 1979, John was a young musician obsessed with learning the fingerstyle guitar of the masters in East and Central Africa. So, with the headlong energy of youth, he traveled throughout Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and the DR Congo to meet his heroes, carrying a Marantz tape deck and a couple guitars.

Many of the artists were past their prime, muscled out by the Congolese electric styles that had taken over the countryside. Some didn’t even have guitars. But they still remembered the songs, and they graciously took John in and shared their music. The recordings are incredibly intimate and casual, made at beer halls, backyards, and village squares. The legendary Jean-Bosco Mwenda even let John crash at his compound for a month (though he never let him record him playing… the recording on this album is from a practice tape Mwenda shared).

John made these recordings for posterity - so he could document (and learn) these fast disappearing techniques. But Original Music, a small label in New York run by John Storm Roberts, recognized how unique they were and released several of John’s recordings on tiny runs of LPs in the 1980s. When Mississippi emerged from the ooze in ~2005, these Original Music records featuring John Low’s recordings were some of the biggest inspirations. The splinter-riddled “African Guitar Box” borrowed heavily from these records.

Years later, while working on some releases of Tanzanian music in Dar Es Salaam, I met the musician and archivist John Kitime. John’s father, Francis Kitime, appears on John Low’s Original Music releases and is one of our favorite artists - an incredible guitarist with whispered songs that sounded like lullabyes. John Kitime, the son, is a well-regarded guitarist himself, and has devoted his life to archiving the musical heritage of Tanzania in its fullness, amassing thousands of songs and documents. John Kitime has now worked with Mississippi on several different records from the region, and has become, like his father, an inspiration and touchstone for what we do.

The friendship with John Kitime led me to connect with John Low, the field recordist, who is now retired and living in the UK. John was pleased to hear that his recordings had shaped our little label. And, he mentioned in passing, there were hundreds more songs where that came from. Bulayo (and a follow up record coming this fall) pull from this vast archive, featuring unheard tracks by favorites like Kitime and Losta Abelo. John remembers, in vivid detail, each of the interactions that led to these recordings, and can still play many of these songs by memory. His notes to the record are an important document.

Meanwhile, in Tanzania, John Kitime and his siblings regularly get together to listen to their late father’s recordings, including those made by John Low on their chance encounter in 1979. It’s been a joy to bring everyone together on this release - John Low’s guitar recordings, with an introduction written by John Kitime. To add one more layer (and one more John) to the story, when I first met Eric from the Mississippi shop, we had bagels and talked about our respective obsessions with John Storm Roberts’ Original Music. Our friendship began there, on a foundation of carbs and guitars.

Thanks to your support last Bandcamp Friday, we were able to donate over $400 to a kitchen for those displaced by the Israeli assault on Lebanon. Next month, we’ll be directing 20% of all Bandcamp Friday sales to John Kitime’s Tanzanian Music Archive. John is about to embark on a mission to document fast-disappearing children’s songs in rural parts of Tanzania, and these funds will support that work. You can hear more in our interview below.

When I mentioned, somewhat sheepishly, to a friend under active bombardment in Beirut that we’d be donating to a music project rather than a more urgent humanitarian one, he set me straight. “Good. In a world run by monsters, we need someone to collect Tanzanian children’s songs. Otherwise, what’s the fucking point???”

Sending love your way on this week, which marks the one-year of Michael Hurley’s passing and the fifth week of the war on Iran.

Cyrus + Mississippi Records

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Various Artists - Bulayo
Guitar Songs from Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, and DR Congo

African acoustic guitar masterpieces, expanding on Mississippi’s beloved “African Guitar Box.” In 1979 and 1980, a young British-Kenyan musician named John Low hit the road to learn finger-style guitar from his heroes. He traveled across Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, and Zambia, visiting, and sometimes staying in the homes of, stars like Jean-Bosco Mwenda, Losta Abelo, and Emmanuel Mulemena. He also documented brilliant but previously under-recorded artists like Tanzania’s Francis Kitime and Kenya’s Mtonga Wanganangu. 

Regardless of status, John approached each artist humbly, as a student. He recorded in homes, village squares, and watering holes. The sessions are intimate and casual, the artists at ease. John’s tape deck picked up some of the continent’s greatest artists along with the sounds of laughter, children playing, and glasses clinking. Five decades on, these tapes offer a rare glimpse into how fingerstyle guitar was actually heard, outside the tense confines of commercial studios. 

We’re grateful to work with John to put out these stunning recordings (and a companion album scheduled for the fall). Some appeared on the Original Music compilations that inspired the early Mississippi Records, many have never been released, and all are expertly remastered from the original tape by Andy Walter (Honest Jon’s, Abbey Road Studio). Thanks to John’s meticulous notes and our own contacts in the field, we’ve been able to pay artists and their families directly for their contributions to the release. John Kitime provides an intro, and the big booklet includes new photos, historical notes, and lyric translations. Pressed at the highest quality by the fam at Smashed Plastic in Chicago.

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Pinky Tex
The Singing Angel from Devil Rock Canyon EP

Born in the ashes of WWII, the only girl of seven children, they called her Pinky. She grew up in the windy plains of the Texas panhandle, singing in the church choir and dreaming of being on the stage one day. Just 18, she met the love of her life and soon married rodeo cowboy Cole Tex. Sharing a common thirst for adventure, they traveled the country roads together. He wrote the songs and Pinky sang them, performing in small roadhouses and honky-tonks all over the southwestern states. These are some of the few recordings that still exist, presented on a 12” 4-track EP. Co-release with Rocks In Your Head Records.

an interview with Tanzanian music archivist John Kitime

Visit John Kitime’s Tanzania Music Archive here…

John Kitime is a true inspiration. An independent archivist, musician, and folklorist based in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, John has been traveling his country and creating a massive archive of “the spectrum of recorded music made before the year 2000.” An accomplished guitarist and DJ, John is constantly finding ways to share Tanzania’s musical heritage with the public, and especially with the youth. He has collaborated with Mississippi on our releases by Frank & His Sisters, John Ondolo, Kiko Kids, and our most recent release, Bulayo. John is tireless, generous, and beloved throughout the region for his dedication to art and culture that others ignore.

It’s not easy work. John is completely independent. State and private support is hard to come by even in Tanzania, a country with a remarkable history of preserving its own history (under Nyerere’s African Socialist government, the state-run Radio Tanzania recorded and stored over 100,000 hours of local music, still in vaults and largely inaccessible to researchers today).

But John persists! His latest project is a dive into the fast disappearing world of Tanzanian children’s songs. I caught up with him as he prepared to hit the road for a month of field work.

20% of all bandcamp sales on the next Bandcamp Friday will go to John to support this trip. If you know of other ways to support this vital work, please contact us or write to John directly. You can follow his work at his blog and on IG.

Read on!

Cyrus: How did you being your archival work? What was your inspiration?

John Kitime: Both my father and paternal grandfather had a lot of stuff from their past life. Few have survived, but I still have them, their documents. I began collecting music in the 80s, although I lost a lot from moving from one place to the other. Some survived, which became the base of my archiving.

CM: What is your goal for the archive? Why do you do it despite all the challenges?

JK: I guess my goals have changed through the years. First I just enjoyed listening to the stuff I had, mostly music. Then in 1997 I tried to convince Radio Tanzania Dar es Salaam, the government broadcasting station which has the oldest and biggest collection of Tanzanian audio works, to digitize the work. To date, that has not been possible. In 2009, I met Rebecca Corey who had begun to try to digitize Tanzanian music through her program called the Tanzania Heritage Project. When she left Tanzania, I continued on to date.

My aim is to come up with a digital archive of all Tanzanian music, which would be made available to whoever is interested. I have thousands of audio files which lack metadata, and thousands are still to be collected. So far its a one-man show because I don't have any external funding.

I have a great love for Tanzanian music. From June I will start collecting and documenting traditional children's songs from Tanzania. I have a new blog for that project where you can follow along.

CM: Tell me more about your father, Francis Kitime’s music, and its influence on your work.

JK: I grew up seeing my father play music, in particular the acoustic guitar, although he could also play the trumpet, saxophone, ukulele, banjo and the accordion. He composed songs mostly about his village life, but he also had funny songs about us his children. It sure influenced me to become a musician. And most of my life I have lived as a musician. I learned early to love music.

CM: In your opinion, what is the difference between John Low's work - archiving and documenting as an outsider, and your work - archiving and documenting as someone from Tanzania? How do you see these activities as similar and different?

JK: John Low had a particular kind of music in his archiving and documenting. I am interested in the whole spectrum of Tanzanian music before 2000. And I would want young Tanzania artists to use the archived works to come up with new songs.

John Kitime’s introduction opens up our latest release, Bulayo, a collection of gorgeous African acoustic guitar tracks recorded by John Low in 1979. One of the standout artists is John Kitime’s father, Francis Kitime, who did not release any commercial recordings and whose music comes to us thanks to John Low’s work.