various: voltaique panoramique volume 1

Kindred Spirits presents a compilation containing 13 rare and sought-after recordings from Burkina Faso. Rich and fascinating, this release comes with extensive liner-notes and an insert with photographs of the original 7" records from which Voltaique Panoramique was compiled. Until recently, not much was known about music from Burkina Faso, formerly called the Upper Volta. It is still one of West Africa's lesser-known forms of popular music. A few years before the country changed its name to Burkina Faso, thanks to Thomas Sankara's dream for a new society, voltaic music emerged as some form of true cultural revolution. Remote, poor and isolated, Burkina Faso looked to the orchestras and artists from neighboring countries such as Mali, The Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Despite the fact that the 1960s and 1970s Upper Volta lacked a proper recording studio and record pressing plant, there was a great deal of popular music produced in the country, mostly on 45s. Located at its northern border, Niger is the only other West African country whose music stayed as isolated as the music hailing from Burkina Faso. Many of its bands and artists hail mostly from Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso. They infuse some of the rich local traditions, such as mossi dances or dioula singing with Afro-Cuban flavors, American rhythm 'n' blues, French pop, and Congolese rumba. Electric guitars and organs swirl around balafon and solid horn sections.