From My Shelves – Osibisa – Woyaya

(From My Shelves is an occasional series on the blog looking at some of my favorites from my personal collections)

“Woyaya” by Osibisa (1971) When I went away to college my musical tastes were, um, limited.  I went to college with three albums – Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits, Chicago’s Cardinal album and Nat “King” Cole’s Greatest hits.  I had grown up on pop radio and folk music.  To be perfectly honest my musical taste was pretty bland and my knowledge of anything beyond my tight little universe was very, very small.

Among the friends I made at college was a local guy named Tom Hesketh who came at music from the polar opposite place from me.  He introduced me to all kinds of new music and got me thinking about it in ways that changed my life.  We are still friends all these years later.

One of the groups that I heard in that time and place was an Afro-pop group called Osibisa.  Made up of Ghanian and Caribbean musicians they drew on the musical traditions of their home countries and fashioned a kind of music I had never heard before.  Today we would classify them as “World Music” but that would be putting the cart in front of the horse.  First there was Osibisa (and others) then came “World Music”.

Woyaya is their second album but the first that I heard.  It has an infectious energy that is delivered through rhythms and sounds that were just world shattering for this sheltered boy from middle class suburbia.  All these years later I still love the sounds and music.  Their first two albums (the eponymous “Osibisa” and “Woyaya”) are far and away their best work.  For those of us who have clung to the vinyl beliving we would never see CD versions the good news is that they were re-mastered and issued as a two CD set in 2004.

The band famouly claimed that their name means  “criss cross rhythms that explode with happiness”.  I don’t know if that’s a good translation or not but it certainly describes how the music makes me feel.

One of my prize musical possessions.

A live recording of the title track.