Abek Music Band - The Best Of Africa Dance In Zanzibar

This post is why I haven’t been posting, and with this post, I officially declare my undying enmity towards the people of Zanzibar. It is without a doubt the worst African island in the Indian ocean. Madagascar has better crops and better biodiversity. The Seychelles has a better economy. Comoros and Mauritius have better tourism. Nyerere never should have let Zanzibar into Tanzania after decolonization. You motherfuckers broke my CD player in my car and I will kick your asses for real.

I found The Best of Africa Dance in Zanzibar in the pile of old lady CDs I was working through earlier this year, and its shoddy Photoshop cover stood in stark contrast with the floodlit portraits and new age graphics of the rest of the pile. I knew I was in for an experience when the album had a different title on the front cover, the side panels, and the back cover. I was elated when I discovered that the tracks on the CD were in a different order than on the jewel case. This is some hot garbage, ladies and gentlemen. No doubt this was shat out at low cost in order to hawk to foreign tourists (which is probably how it appeared in the old lady pile).

This is a six-song EP and all the songs follow the same basic structure. Shrill trumpet solo, verse with axaste and aux percussion, extremely repetitive chorus with the same vocal melody as the verse but with a harmony this time, and repeat. There’s nothing to fill out the bass frequencies here, no drums or bass guitar or anything, so the mix is very very bright. The songs themselves are decent at best. “Pole Pole” is the standout earworm. I don’t speak Swahili, so the only words on the album I understand are “Tanzania”, “Africa”, “Kilamanjaro”, and “Zanzibar”, which they sing about quite a lot. The rhythms are kind of sloppy in parts, the guitar playing is passable, but the trumpet tone is god-awful. Imagine they had a freshman pep-band trumpeter playing the solo from “Cheerleader” to open every song.

The CD itself has no disc art, just a ring of printer paper glued to the disc. When I played the CD in my car, that glue got too hot and became unstuck from the disc, and the paper top got stuck in my changer mechanism. It cost me $300 to get a mechanic to remove the CD and to tell me that my changer was beyond repair. It would cost me at least $1000 to find another CD changer from a similarly old car and swap it out for mine. My car is too old to be compatible with the new generation of car media centers, and too rusted to be worth making upgrades on anyhow. Therefore, I have no choice but to declare my eternal and undying animosity towards Zanzibar.

The Best of Africa Dance in Zanzibar is a bad EP, and I don’t like it.