Picks of the Week - John Ondolo/Michael Yekha (Tanzania/Malawi)

A pair of one-man bands from southeastern Africa.

It's two for the price of one this time around for the Pick of the Week. As we venture into countries that haven't been represented in the picks thus far. The artists covered seemed to me to be kind of similar (acoustic, one-man band, southeastern Africa) so I combined them.

There's John Ondolo, for starters. Who hailed from Tanzania and spent much of his time in Kenya. Mississippi Records - which is not based in Mississippi (of course) - has done us the favor of compiling a number of Ondolo's songs from more than a half century ago as Hypnotic Guitar of John Ondolo. Hypnotic indeed, and leaning toward laconic, although “Kenya Twist,” the song featured here, is a bit more upbeat. Find it at this Bandcamp link. Look here and here for articles that dig a bit more deeply into Ondolo's life and music.

Michael Yekha Band is something of a misnomer, since the "band" was just Yekha, a Malawian musician who played guitar (and banjo on this track?) and accompanied himself with percussion. A blind musician, he was born in 1951 and died young, in 1989.