Lost Tapes for Lovers
Discovering an unusual conversation between musicians from London and Kenya
The search term: “Lost Tapes.”
It’s become a regular part of the trawling here at Echo Locator — the random search for some unusual treasure from an archive or a band’s back pages. There is no shortage of this type of material. But as with everything else, not all of it turns out to be musically interesting. Some lost tapes should probably remain lost.
Every once in a while, though, the Google machine serves up an unexpected gem like the Owiny Sigoma Band. This began as a cross-cultural experiment, funded by a UK arts non-profit called Art of Protest, between a crew of London based multi-instrumentalists and two musicians from the Luo tribe of western Kenya.
The project grew out of a 2009 cultural-exchange trip. After meeting Joseph Nyamungu, whose instrument is the eight-stringed lyre known as the nyatiti, and drummer Charles Owoko, the Brits arranged for a recording session in a vacant factory. They returned months later for more recording, arriving at a sound built on intricate metallic percussion and interconnected string instruments, unified of course by the repetition-encouraging pulse of the African drum (the primary drum of the Luo is the nydounge drum). The union of traditional East African melodies and deftly employed electronics leads to something unusual — dance music that also works as a hypnotic portal for introspection.
Eventually the band toured Europe and recorded a series of albums that are all available on Bandcamp. Owoko died in 2015; the surviving members spent some time combing through session reels for abandoned explorations and incomplete takes that they then developed further. Nothing on The Lost Tapes sounds like scraps, though: The enchanting call and response of “Ogito” and the whistling meditations of “Owiny Space” resonate as fully formed works even if they’re extensions of the compositions on earlier albums. Usually “lost tapes” anthologies are not a good place to start an encounter; it worked just fine for me. Struck by the creativity and sense of expansive possibility on display here, I’m looking forward to diving into the catalog.
As usual I’ve included a link to encourage a first encounter. Please, if you listen and become even a little bit curious about Owiny Sigoma Band, run over to Bandcamp and make a purchase. If we don’t support endeavors like this, the Lost Tapes will truly be lost.
