Some record labels release new music. Analog Africa goes looking for music that almost disappeared. Its compilations collect funk, soul, psychedelic and dance records made across Africa and Latin America, mostly from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, and every one comes with the story of how the music was found.
Here is a short history of the label and eight compilations that make a great starting point.
The story of Analog Africa
Analog Africa is the work of Samy Ben Redjeb, a record collector whose working life was built around crate digging. According to the label, he worked as a diving instructor in Senegal and later as a flight attendant on routes linking Lagos, Addis Ababa and Accra. His first step into music came in Dakar, where he set up a club night at a hotel and played forgotten African records to a dance floor.
The label itself began in 2006 with a release by the Green Arrows of Zimbabwe. From there it zeroed in on the late 1960s to the early 1980s, a period the label sees as the key era for modern African music. Over time the search spread across the Atlantic to Colombia, Peru and Brazil, following the routes that African rhythms took into Latin America.
What sets the catalog apart is the research. Ben Redjeb travels to the source, tracks down the musicians, producers or their families, licenses the songs and interviews the people involved. Many releases come with thick booklets full of photographs and liner notes, which turn each compilation into a small history book.
8 essential Analog Africa compilations
1. African Scream Contest (2008)
The third Analog Africa release is the one that put the label on the map. The project started in August 2005, when Ben Redjeb arrived in Cotonou, Benin, hoping to find a few good records. Eight more trips followed. Thirty months and a few thousand records later came this 14-track set of raw, psychedelic music from Benin and Togo in the 1970s.
The label explains that Beninese bands fused rhythms from traditional Vodun ceremonies with soul, Latin music and funk. The title comes from the screams that spread through Beninese recordings after the Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou hit "Gbeti Madjro." Ben Redjeb conducted 16 interviews for the 44-page booklet, and one track was found on a master tape a producer had shelved and never released. African Scream Contest at Analog Africa.
2. Afro-Beat Airways (2010)
This one began with a lost passport. Ben Redjeb missed a flight to Angola, rebooked to Accra instead and ended up with producer Dick Essilfie-Bonzie, founder of Essiebons Records, who had just digitized around 800 songs from his master tapes. The result is 15 tracks of organ-driven Afrobeat, cosmic Afro-funk and psychedelic boogie from Ghana and Togo. The label says he recorded a dozen interviews, scanned 90 pictures and transferred 120 master tapes, all documented in a 44-page full color booklet. Musicians he met along the way included Ebo Taylor and Gyedu-Blay Ambolley. Afro-Beat Airways at Analog Africa.
3. Bambara Mystic Soul (2011)
For its tenth release, Analog Africa went to Burkina Faso, formerly known as Haute Volta. The 16 tracks cover 1974 to 1979, when the country's sound mixed Afro-funk, Islamic rhythms and Afro-Latin influences brought by visiting Cuban ensembles, with melodies and guitar techniques from Mali and Guinea as the defining ingredient. Orchestras such as L'Harmonie Voltaique and Super Volta appear, and the singer Amadou Ballaké, whom the label calls a national icon, is featured heavily. The label describes it as its venture into possibly the most obscure African sounds it had covered at the time. Bambara Mystic Soul at Analog Africa.
4. Diablos del Ritmo (2012)
Analog Africa's first big step outside Africa follows African music to Barranquilla, the Colombian port city on the Caribbean coast. Ben Redjeb first arrived in March 2007 with African records to trade for Colombian ones, and seven expeditions followed over half a decade. The 32 tracks are split in two. Part 1 covers Afrobeat, Afro-funk and psychedelic sounds, while Part 2 is a run of tropical dance rhythms such as Puya, Porro, Gaita and Cumbiamba. It is the clearest picture in the catalog of how African records shaped dance music on another continent. Diablos del Ritmo at Analog Africa.
5. Space Echo (2016)
Space Echo collects what the label calls the cosmic sound of Cabo Verde, the island nation off the coast of West Africa. The liner story is a playful legend about a ship full of synthesizers and keyboards that turns up stranded in a field on São Nicolau, with the instruments handed out to schools. The music behind it is real: 15 songs where keyboards helped modernize local styles like Mornas, Coladeras and Funaná. Eight of them were recorded with the band Voz de Cabo Verde, led by arranger Paulino Vieira. The vinyl edition is a gatefold double long-playing (LP) record with a 12-page booklet. Space Echo at Analog Africa.
6. Bitori, Legend of Funaná (2016)
This is a reissue of a single album, and one of the best entry points in the catalog. Funaná is an accordion-driven style from Cabo Verde that the Portuguese colonial rulers prohibited until independence in 1975. Bitori, born Victor Tavares, saved for two years of hard labor in São Tomé to buy his accordion in the 1950s. He was 59 when he first walked into a studio in 1997 to record Bitori Nha Bibinha with singer Chando Graciosa, drummer Grace Evora and bassist Danilo Tavares. The label says many Cabo Verdeans consider it the best Funaná album ever made. Legend of Funaná at Analog Africa.
7. Mogadisco (2019)
In November 2016, Ben Redjeb traveled to Mogadishu, and the label says that made Analog Africa the first music label to set foot there. In the archives of Radio Mogadishu he found an unmarked pile of recordings that staff described as mainly instrumental and strange music. That pile became the starting point for Mogadisco, a set of Somali funk, disco and Afrobeat from the golden era of Mogadishu's live music scene, with booklet stories about bands such as Iftin and Dur-Dur Band. Tracking down the musicians, many of them living in the diaspora, took three years, and the booklet carries no fewer than 50 photos from the 1970s and 1980s. Mogadisco at Analog Africa.
8. Congo Funk (2024)
The most recent pick took the team on two trips to Kinshasa and one to Brazzaville, the two capitals that face each other across the Congo River. Around 2,000 songs were boiled down to 14 on a double LP. The label traces the sound to the Zaïre 74 music festival held around the famous Ali and Foreman fight, after which young guitarists blended hyperactive Rumba with psych and funk. Small independent labels like Cover N°1, Mondenge and Editions Moninga captured that wave. If you like guitar music, start here. Congo Funk at Analog Africa.
Where to start
If you want one record, take African Scream Contest for the raw Benin sound or Congo Funk for guitar workouts. If you want a single artist instead of a compilation, Bitori's Legend of Funaná is a full album with no filler. Fans of deep catalog work from labels like Light in the Attic and the Numero Group will feel right at home, and anyone who loved our Japanese city pop guide will enjoy the same thrill of hearing a scene you never knew existed. For a jazz angle on the same era, see our Blue Note starter guide.
Where to buy
Analog Africa sells its catalog directly through its own Bandcamp store, with vinyl, compact disc and digital formats depending on the title. Check each release page for the formats currently on offer.
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