From the little I've been able to find out about him, Abel Yéplé of Ivory Coast has had a long career. I suspect he may have passed away recently. I don't know enough about Ivorian music to situate his sound within the panapoly of musical styles there: Ziglibithy, Polihet, Zoblazo, Zouglou and so forth. Judging by today's offering - 1992's Adji Aka (EMI NH0013) he borrows a little bit from all of them. Whatever you want to call it, it's fine, fine music!
Download Adji Aka as a zipped file here.
Thank you for posting this thread of Ivorian music. I visited the country in 1992 and it feels as if we were buying music from the same cassette vendor. I have no idea either of how to differentiate between the various styles. However I loved virtually everything I heard and wish there was more available in Europe. I've picked up a few excellent vinyl LPs from Superfly in Paris but I'm looking forward to whatever you post next.
ReplyDeleteWOW!
ReplyDeleteMatt Lavoie posted a couple more sons from Yeple Jazz on his old blog. There he said "From the center of the Cote D’Ivoire this is the Yeple Jazz. Led by Abel Yeple, and inspired by the rhythms of the Gouro people, the Yeple Jazz had several big hits in the 1970s."
ReplyDeletehttps://blogs.voanews.com/music-time-in-africa/2007/12/17/recent-nuggets-from-the-cote-divoire/
oh, one other comment - looking at discogs it seems like this was probably originally recorded on the "New Horizons" label
ReplyDeleteanyway, thanks and loking forward to listening to it