Electric Blue | 04

"Martin Street Special" - Nkono Teles

"Who's the Other Guy" - Dizzy K

"International Funk (Instrumental)" - Rim Kwaku Obeng

"Disco Dancer" - Kiki Gyan

“Picnic” - Starlight

"All Night Long" - Psychemagik

"Body and Soul (WhateverWhatever Remix)" - William Onyeabor

"Assia (feat. Pat Kalla)" - Voilaaa Pat Kalla

"Rumours (Mr. K Edit)" - Christy Essien Igbokwe

"I Don't Want No-Body (To Tell Me What To Do)" - Akwassa

"Shake Your Body" - Mike Umoh

"Hey Mister [Re-edit]" - Althea Forest & Togetherness

"Martin Street Special" – Nkono Teles

Our opener comes from Love Vibration, Soundway's 2023 retrospective of the Cameroonian producer who arrived in Lagos in the early 1980s after Tony Allen hired him for a post-Fela band that never materialized. A makossa player by training, Teles retooled himself for funk on a steady diet of Cameo and The Crusaders, and became the first to push the drum machine into Nigerian pop. He lent production and keyboards to over 100 artists, including Steve Monite's Only You and Dizzy K, whose work appears next in this mix. Original copies of his Party Beats LP have sold for up to $700. Teles left Lagos in the 1990s and died in Cameroon in 2011.

"Who's the Other Guy" – Dizzy K

Kunle "Dizzy K" Falola recorded this cut for Traffic Jammer, his 1985 EMI Nigeria LP produced by mentor Tony Okoroji, with a studio team that included Nkono Teles, this mix's opening artist. Billed at home as Nigeria's Michael Jackson, Falola released six albums in the 1980s, touring with The Whispers after his 1982 debut Excuse Me Baby took off. The run ended on his own terms: after a born-again conversion in 1989, he declined a new EMI contract and moved to London for gospel music. Original Traffic Jammer copies are among his hardest to find, so Sweet Music Volume II, licensed directly from Falola in 2024, restores the track alongside his own song-by-song commentary.

"International Funk (Instrumental)" – Rim Kwaku Obeng

Born Samuel K. Mfojo, the Ghanaian drummer left the Uhuru Dance Band for Los Angeles, where Quincy Jones invited him into his band before a bandmate's lawsuit threat killed the offer and the band abandoned him there, stranded for six months. A chance meeting with Joan Armatrading helped him rebuild, and he cut his private-press debut Rim Arrives in San Francisco in 1977. Originals reached £200 before the album became BBE Africa's first release in 2015. "International Funk" arrived later under the Rim and The Believers name, drum machines and synths in full 1980s effect, appended to the reissue as a bonus 12", with Rim himself covering drums, keys, congas, and timbales.

"Disco Dancer" – Kiki Gyan

By 1975, Kofi Kwarko "Kiki" Gyan had risen from high school dropout to Osibisa's keyboard chair to eighth in a world ranking of keyboardists, sharing the top ten with Stevie Wonder and Billy Preston before turning twenty-one. "Disco Dancer" opens 24 Hours in a Disco, Soundway's collection of his 1978 to 1982 solo work with liner notes by Uchenna Ikonne. Note how the keyboard melody steers straight into the hook of "Shake Your Booty". After addiction took his fortune and career, Gyan died in 2005 at forty-seven, his story still told as a warning to young Ghanaian pop stars. His music traveled far: BadBadNotGood placed this track on their 2017 Late Night Tales, between Stereolab and Thundercat.

"Picnic" – Starlight

"Picnic" dropped in 1983 as a 12” on Heads Records, the short-lived South African label whose catalog Soundway later mined for its disco-dub edits EP. Starlight was the studio project of Emil Zoghby and John Galanakis, producers who covered international club hits for a multiracial crossover market that apartheid-era South Africa was trying to prevent. "Picnic" reworked a local hit, and their answer cut "Picnicing" landed on Gumba Fire, the sister compilation to Doing It In Lagos, which supplies this mix's selection. The self-titled album carried a sleeve painted by Zulu Bidi of the spiritual jazz group Batsumi, and original pressings now command grail prices. Afrosynth remastered the album from the original tapes in 2023, forty years on.

"All Night Long" – Psychemagik

The UK duo's Undercover Lovers series re-edits cover versions, and this one reworks "Ka Anyi Gbaa Egwu," Mannix Okonkwo's Igbo-language version of Lionel Richie's "All Night Long (All Night)" from the rare Nigerian LP Love Doctor, where the backing vocals are credited to Stella Monye and Dizzy K Falola, heard earlier in this mix. The cover corrected something Richie himself confessed: the "African" chants in his 1983 original, which topped three Billboard charts, were gibberish written when he ran out of time to hire a translator. Okonkwo recut the song in an actual African language, and Psychemagik's 2019 edit finally gave the answer record the circulation the private press never had.

"Body and Soul (Whatever/Whatever Remix)" – William Onyeabor

The original "Body & Soul" anchors Onyeabor's 1980 LP, one of eight albums the reclusive Nigerian self-released on his own Wilfilms label after studying record manufacturing in Europe. A 2002 bootleg backed with a Scientist remix made the track a party staple a decade before Luaka Bop's 2013 compilation, assembled by Uchenna Ikonne, which officially opened the catalog. This version comes from What?!, the remix LP born of Luaka Bop's partnership with Moog, who built custom Onyeabor-edition synths for the project. New York remix veteran Justin Strauss and Bryan Mette, working as Whatever/Whatever, stretch the elastic funk past eight minutes. Onyeabor passed away in 2017.

"Assia (feat. Pat Kalla)" – Voilaaa

The opener of Voiciii, the 2021 third album from Voilaaa, the Afro-disco vehicle of Bruno "Patchworks" Hovart, who played every instrument himself at Ginger X Studio in Lyon save some brass, and whose other aliases include The Dynamics and Mr President. Pat Kalla, the project's most prominent voice, is a Lyon-based singer whose father came from the Sawa people, the Cameroonian originators of makossa, the same tradition Nkono Teles worked in before his Lagos reinvention at the top of this mix. Kalla grew up on family vinyl by Manu Dibango and Fela, both of whom receive direct tributes elsewhere on the album, and his Voilaaa features launched a solo career of his own beginning with 2018's Jongler.

"Rumours (Mr. K Edit)" – Christy Essien Igbokwe

Nigeria's Lady of Songs recorded "Rumours" for Give Me A Chance, the 1980 Afrodisia LP she wrote, arranged, and co-produced, packaged in a gatefold with a die-cut heart. A singer in six languages and later the first female president of PMAN, the musicians' union  also once led by Tony Okoroji, producer of our Dizzy K cut, she remained a national figure until her death in 2011. Originals reached grail prices before the Mr Bongo reissue. The version here comes from Danny Krivit, issued on Volume 108 of his Edits By Mr. K series, the New York DJ's treatments specialize in giving cuts the runway they deserve. 

"I Don't Want No-Body (To Tell Me What To Do)" – Akwassa

Akwassa was the Afro-funk partnership of guitarist Felix "Feladey" Odey and keyboardist Kevin Coburn, among the first Nigerian funk bands to put a full album to tape with 1975's La'ila. This 1974 cut resurfaced on Afro Exotique 2 in 2023, a straight funk vamp that peels off into a Hammond, wah-wah, and Moog odyssey at the halfway mark. The same lineup recorded in parallel as the Heads Funk Band, a double identity that kept collectors untangling the discography while originals of 1977's In The Groove climbed to hundreds of pounds. Feladey later appears on the client list of Nkono Teles, this mix's top producer. 

"Shake Your Body" – Mike Umoh

"Shake Your Body" opens Getting On Getting Down, Umoh's 1981 LP for Lagos label Duomo Sounds, and reached wider ears through Doing It In Lagos, a 2016 survey of the boogie and disco scene that flourished under Nigeria's oil boom and return to democracy. This was the age of the mobile club DJ, when better sound systems let records displace live bands and Nigerian productions competed in seamless rotation with American imports. The compilation, steered by producers including Nkono Teles and Tony Okoroji (scoring 8.5 by Pitchfork), also had a sister release: Gumba Fire. 

"Hey Mister [Re-edit]" – Althea Forest & Togetherness

Our closer features the voice of Althea Forrest, who began singing for Derrick Harriott at thirteen and cut "Hey Mister," her first recording. This single was produced at Federal Studios in 1976, the year before she and Donna Reid made the  international hit  "Uptown Top Ranking." Harriott built his reputation on US soul covers, and this original broke the formula, released as a Crystal label 7" that sank, Jamwax suggests, "probably because it was not a cover." The singer’s surname drifts between Forest and Forrest depending on the pressing. Jamwax gave the track its first 12" reissue in 2016, and the re-edit extends the original 45, closing the mix on a psychedelic disco groove.

Listen to: Electric Blue | 01