Digging in West-Africa

Hip hop culture, as we know, has made a major contribution in unearthing obscure funk and soul music from the 1970s and 80s. Numerous jazz musicians have rebuilt their careers over being sampled by A Tribe Called Quest, Gangstarr etc. The art of digging for rare records that came to life in the late 70's Bronx through people like Afrika Bambaataa a.k.a. the Master of Records is now a worldwide culture led by 30-plus funk and hip hop heads who have the history, knowledge and money to go out and buy stuff. One of them is Frank aka dj Soulpusher, a German dj (and 'vinyl archeologist' as he calls himself) who migrated to Guinee-Conakry in 2005 with the prime purpose of digging for rare vinyl and then playing them in clubs back home, making online mixes and selling some of the doubles (and these records may easily sell for over a hundred euros each). While many producers in Africa are still sleeping on the sampling and inspirational potential of afrobeat, afrofunk etc, Frank's blog has become really popular with an international crowd, and consequently a lot of lost classics get rediscovered and sometimes compiled or sampled. Now Frank recently moved back to New York where he lived before, but his web updates are still on. Have a look at this trailer for "Take Me Away Fast", a documentary in the making on his digging all over West Africa. If you are in NYC you can catch him tomorrow night (July 12) playing his tunes during Bumpshop at club APT, 419 West 13th St.