AfricaIs aCountry

The Trumpet King

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Trumpet King

By
Sean Jacobs

Zeal Onyia was a master Nigerian trumpet player from the 1950s treated as an equal by Louis Armstrong.

Jeremy of Naijablog forwarded me this Youtube video of two recorded songs by  Zeal Onyia, the master Nigerian trumpet player from the 1950s of whom Louis Armstrong on a visit to Nigeria in 1961 was to have asked:  “Who is that hip cat?”

In the video you can hear two of Onyia’s highlife inflected compositions, “Money Trouble” and “Lumumba.”  The recordings you hear “were taken from a tape of tape that was originally recorded off an old 78 rpm record given to Don [Maxwell, the guy who originally uploaded them to the internet] by Zeal Onyia himself in 1964.”

You can read the story how these two recordings came to be in the possession of Maxwell on his site Abstract Concrete Works.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.