The Lost Tapes

The Lost Tapes is the fourth album from the Owiny Sigoma Band and sadly it celebrates the end of the project. It’s a brilliant, passionate and bittersweet farewell, which stirs the dancing spirit while giving you an inspirational hug. Twelve years ago, a cultural exchange project, The Art of Protest, in Kenya brought together Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, Melt Yourself Down), brothers Jesse (Gorillaz) and Louis (Zapatilla) Hackett from London, with Joseph Nyamungu, vocalist and nyatiti (eight-stringed lyre) player, and Charles Owoko and his nydounge drum. Their music became a revelatory fusion bringing together the rootsy Kenyan Luo tradition and the digital vibe of London’s musical melting pot. They made albums in Nairobi, London and Kampala.

Sadly Owoko passed away in 2015, and The Lost Tapes was recorded in 2019 with an additional musician, Ugandan Lawrence Okelo who plays amadinda (xylophone) and adungu, an arched harp made from hollowed-out wood. The soundscape of this album stunningly highlights the traditional instruments, often accompanied by looped rhythms and washes of keyboard and other electronic means. There’s more of a dubplate/Caribbean style in the rhythmic punctuations – generally less of a hectic BPM, but that befits the poignancy of this moment, for us and them. The longest track, ‘Christine’, is a tender rumba-like ballad around which the strings of the nyatiti and the adungu weave – nine minutes of musical bliss which disappear so swiftly, you have to replay instantly. Charles is remembered reverently but rhythmically on ‘Deep Charles’ with its resonant adungu sound and haze of dangerous dub. Each track has its own magic, gentle or exuberant and the twin streams of their sound, roots and digital, never disappear. Leave them wanting more is the sage advice offered to artists across the centuries, and that is surely what the Owiny Sigoma Band are doing. May the musicians long continue their inspired work in all their forthcoming projects.