Digging 4 Gold / Libations and a Father’s Wisdom

Text 2 Feb 235 notes Libations and a Father’s Wisdom

Checking out records as the sun rises over downtown Kumasi.

Lion and I have learned to respect the outside forces of the supernatural and their influence on our record hunting. We have “seen” it for ourselves all too clearly.

Let me explain.

A few months ago, we ran over an old lady. It was a weekday and traffic was thick. We dipped in between the packed lanes on Lion’s beat up scooter, ensuing in a never-ending game of chicken with the countless street vendors who hover over all the stagnant vehicles, hocking their various items.

“Illegal hustlers!” Lion yells, in a humorous fit of anger. I simply try to make any sort of noise to get their attention before it’s too late.

These guys are out there on a daily basis so they know how to maneuver themselves out of harm’s way . However, alongside these obstacles you also have random pedestrians coming out from every direction attempting to cross the road. These people are less versed in the hazards, and, although it would appear somewhat logical, they’re all seemingly clueless about which direction to look in for on-coming vehicles.

That’s how we hit our dear old lady friend.

Honestly, it wasn’t too bad and we paid for her to go to the hospital and get checked out. Apparently, she was on her way back from the hospital for some previous incident when we hit her, so maybe she’s accident-prone.

Still, Lion swore for weeks that she had cursed us and was affecting our record search. After a long drought, I began to believe him. I even suggested we make some offerings of our own to counteract it, but I eventually recanted the thought. Best to let things take their own natural course.

Unfortunately, when our latest ad when out there were virtually no calls coming in. Lion began to worry. Two days had passed and it seemed the curse was still working on us. In desperation, he decided to call his father, who had advised him to pour some libations to the gods prior to our ad coming out. Like any good father, he gave Lion an “I told you so” speech and quickly got to work in order to please the gods. A chicken was sacrificed, and offers were made.

The very next day, everything changed.

Call me superstitious, but the gods seem happy. And so are we.

Here’s a choice selection of some of the records we’ve acquired over the last few weeks. Just to keep things interesting, for this month’s sampler I decided to mix things up (literally) and blend some of the tracks using a basic recording program. It’s nothing serious, just some simple crossovers.

As for the actual music, I’ve included some serious afro funk (Ebo Taylor and Afro Kelenkye Band) and disco classics (Sidiku Bauari and Bunny Mack) alongside some deeper highlife tunes, including my all-time favorite “Sikyi Highlife”, a 20+ min masterpiece by Dr. K Gyasi & his Noble Kings. I should also mention that the first track, albeit pretty beat up, is just the type of melancholy song I l tend to favor nowadays and has got me desperately searching for a cleaner copy. I’ve included it in hopes that you’ll agree.