Man No Die

Bola Johnson has been one of the finds in the recent plethora of re c ent Nigerian highlife/Afro-funk archive reissues. Those multi-artist collections, of course, cherry-picked the best tracks by the Nigerian trumpeter and singer, whose recording career with his band the Easy Life Top Beats seems to have been over by the early 1970s, when he found alternative employment presenting a comedy radio show in Lagos. Much of his music predates Fela Kuti's Afro– beat revolution and the first disc in particular in this chronologically arranged collection is locked in a melodic and innocent-sounding highlife-meets-calypso style that is pleasant, but seldom captivating. Parts of disc two are decidedly funkier, and on ‘Hot Pants’ he not only borrows a classic Fela/Africa 70 riff but boasts that he is ‘bringing Afro-beat to the world.’ The 12-minute workout ‘Pappa Rebecca Special (She's A Woman)’ has lyrics that point towards his future as a comedian, but it never quite delivers on its promise to ignite (though that doesn't seem to stop it being described in the liner notes as a ‘masterpiece’. If you’ve got the Johnson tracks on compilations – such as Soundway’s Afro Baby and their two-volume Nigeria Special or Strut’s Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump – you may conclude that you already have the best of Bola. Or at least enough of him. As we have come to expect from Kayode Samuel’s Vampisoul label, Man No Die is beautifully packaged, with an informative booklet written by Max Reinhardt. One question, though. Why are there two CDs when the 76 minutes of music here would have fitted onto a single disc?