Long live rock – as long as it is African

Exactly 50 years ago, the English rock band The Who released an album called Odds and Sods, which was, as the title said, a collection of outtakes that had not made it onto previous albums.

I bought it back then in 1974 and listened to it relentlessly (as one does when you cannot buy lots of music) because it was really good.

For some mysterious reason one of the tracks, Long Live Rock, popped into my head the other day, even though I haven’t played the record for decades.

It tells the story of one of the band’s concerts at the Astoria in London, with lyrics saying: “Meanwhile it’s getting late at 10 o’clock/ Rock is dead they say/ Long live rock!”

Around the time of my The Who earworm, I received yet another package of new music from a record store in the UK (these days I have slightly more disposable income than in my teenage years).

I wondered, was The Who’s lyricist Pete Townshend right? 

He is quite ambiguous in the chorus with, “Long live rock! Be it dead or alive,” though.

Looking through my recent vinyl acquisitions, I think he is both right and wrong.

When it comes to contemporary Western rock, it is dead for me — I find it predictable, self-indulgent and same-old.

But when it comes to rock from our continent, it is alive and kicking out some fantastic jams. The simple reason, I think, is because it is sounding both African and rock ’n roll, and it is not complacent.

Here are three current African rock albums I can highly recommend.

• Mdou Moctar — Funeral for Justice: Moctar is a Tuareg songwriter and musician, who is based in Niger, and has a love for Jimi Hendrix and Eddie van Halen’s guitar playing. 

His quartet’s incendiary desert rock has a punkish energy to it, and, on their sixth and latest album, Funeral For Justice, they are in ferocious form. 

The music is louder, faster and wilder. The guitar solos are feedback-scorched and the lyrics are passionately political.

• Bab L’ Bluz — Swaken: Moving to the north, Bab L’ Bluz is a Moroccan-French quartet, which has a similar dynamic blast of energy. 

Swaken, their sophomore release, explores the concept of “possession”. 

The album delivers 11 compelling tracks of psychedelic Gnawa blues, which are brimming with emotion and raw vitality.

• Sahra Halgan — Hiddo Dhawr: A former political refugee, Halgan is an iconic artist from Somaliland, which is on the Horn of Africa and has been independent since 1991 but is unrecognised by the international community.

Her third, the album’s title means “preserve culture”, which is also the name of the cultural centre that Halgan founded in 2013 in Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital. 

Songlines magazine described Hiddo Dhawr as “a counter-intuitive crossover between Halgan’s modern classical Somali qaraami melodies” and her band members “Maël Salètes’ distorted rock ’n roll guitars and the West African percussion of Aymeric Krol”.

Long live African rock!