3. Thomas MapfumoShumba
It’s quite a hard one to find. I did try to look for an original copy for a while. They go for an astonishing amount of money, but my dad had a copy, and so I’ve listened to his quite a lot. It’s mainly because it’s got a track on it called ‘Mhondoro’ which I particularly like. Rather pretentiously as a child, one of the first things I really got into was music from Zimbabwe, just because my dad played a lot of Four Brothers and Bhundu Boys and things like that. I just immediately fell in love with Thomas Mapfumo. I was quite nervous when I first went to go record shopping, but I felt like the way to get around it was to have at least two or three things in your head that you’re always looking for – it made it easier to walk into those buildings. One of those was Thomas Mapfumo, so, for the first few years of going into record shops, I’d just look for his records, he gave me some purpose. Ever since, those Zimbabwean artists that I really got into, the noises they make and the kind of high pitched guitar, those sounds are things that I continuously look for now, not just in African records but in anything. I feel like those noises have embedded themselves in my soul. I’m constantly on the hunt for things that remind me of those records.
[on the John Peel show] I was never really into the indie stuff to be perfectly honest. I just liked the African records and the dub and the reggae and all the progressive electronic sounds. I was never so interested in the bands and even now, going through dad’s records, the 7” sheds are filled with mostly Kenyan and Zimbabwean records of high-life records and things like that. They’re always the things that excite me from his collection.
