Bongo Flavored Independence?
When Boima was in Boston recently, back from a trip that brought him to Dubai and Dar es Salaam (aka Bongo) Nairobi, he mentioned that he noticed CDs on sale on the street, like the one pictured below, which compiled current hip-hop (and r&b) instrumentals, presumably for local rappers and singers to use for their own remixes and versions –
Boima expressly brought this to my attn because, as you can see above, the #1 instro is none other than what I’ve taken to calling the Miss Independent riddim. Unfortunately, Boima hasn’t turned up any vocal versions to add to the spate of recordings on the riddim one can find in Panama (or Jamaica). But I’m sharing this here in the hope that some readers might be able to point me to other examples, whether from the Bongo Flava scene or elsewhere.
Following this illicit riddim around has clearly become a fun little obsession for me. Thanks, Chief!

musicologist, internet annotator, imagined community organizer.

3 Comments Add your own
1. boima | January 14th, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Hi Wayne, this was in Nairobi not Dar, just to clarify. I’m still on the look out for voiced versions!
2. wayneandwax | January 14th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Ooops. Classic American confusion/conflation on display there. Sorry for the mixup; fixed the text above. Thx, again.
3. wayneandwax.com » S&hellip | January 29th, 2010 at 3:13 pm
[...] some special ways in the soundsystemstudio industry-ecology of L20C Kingston, and an approach long gone global via reggae’s own migrations not to mention as absorbed and additionally broadcast by hip-hop, [...]
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed