Music: Food for the Soul

London Azonto music is my current favourite. Ghanaian in vintage, but with a UK twist, its happy, infectious melodies are perfect for a long journey. Check online to find Fuse ODG’s song Antenna.

A competition was held two years ago to find a pair of dancers for the video. A young Ghanaian couple won, with their freestyle dancing on a Manchester tram journey.

It’s a brilliant fun tune and you’ll love the couple’s natural, graceful moves. This summer’s follow-up tune stars them again in the hit, Dangerous Love, with Fuse ODG and Sean Paul, an ode to London’s very cosmopolitan population.

My music collection has become a series of reference points, like page numbers of my past travels. Different tunes remind me of what I was doing, where I was, and who I was with.

Happy memories of growing up. Pubbing and clubbing. Love. Hate. Different countries. New and old friends.

Have you ever thought your taste in music is eclectic (that’s a very polite word for weird or strange) until you meet someone that likes exactly the same music?

There’s nothing quite like a kindred musical spirit. From classics, like the Rolling Stones to The Beatles, The Cure to The Smiths, and Michael Buble to Etta James.

All topped off with a dash of punk, 80s pop, 90s rare groove, reggae, Ska music, and African Highlife.

Eclectic, right?

Search online for a musical tune called Usa Divah by South African band Zozo and Sengere Superbeat.

By 3:45” you’ll be dancing the night away. There’s also an online music video using this tune, with a bunch of African school-kids busting moves, like there’s no tomorrow.

They would put even the late James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, to shame.

Although released a decade ago, its one of the catchiest tunes I’ve heard in a longtime. Guitar riffs and slides, drum beats and singing. It’ll have your feet wiggling and fingers tapping in no time at all.

I played the 11.5-minute tune 16 times in a row the first time I heard it. Addictive, its one tune on my MP3 player that goes everywhere on my travels.

It’s also perfect for dealing with a KL traffic jam. Happy music, it just keeps me going, when all around me is falling apart.

While not quite a prisoner, being a boarding school pupil in London was made much easier with the music we exchanged and listened to on cassettes or the radio.

Listening to tunes from around the world with friends from Nigeria, Tanzania and Kenya, and sometimes canto-pop from Hong Kong, and J-pop from Japan, helped pass the time.

Every Sunday evening the Top 40 Pop Chart Hits countdown would play on the radio. My friends and I would have our cassette players ready to push down the pause button, to cut out the DJ’s commentary.

The rest of the week we’d listen to the same tape over and over again until the next Sunday’s chart show.

Mad World, sung by Tears for Fears, is still an 80s favorite. With my mullet hairstyle, I was often mistaken for a band member when visiting family in Johore and Singapore during the school holidays.

Check online. See the ugly one with the long gaunt face and mullet hair? That’s me in the 80s.

And remember vinyl? Twelve-inch singles of the latest dance hits from the US were all the rage in London during the mid-eighties.

Groove Records, a store in Soho’s Greek Street, was THE place to buy them. This was the home of London’s early Hip-Hop record scene.

Flicking through the different record categories was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon’s exeat from school. As was listening to the latest tunes while rubbing shoulders with London’s future stars.

Most consider my musical taste “wide” (another polite word for “what the heck is that fella listening to now”?), but when it comes to shaking my groove thing to my favorite tunes, I’m in real trouble.

Two left feet, long arms, big hands, and without my glasses, I dance like a constipated, headless chicken.  I normally wrap my arms around myself, and jump up and own, to avoid whacking or stepping on people accidentally.

Open your mind, and remember that music is what makes the world go round. And me. Albeit out of time.