Bongos Ikwue & the Groovies: On the Road with a Nigerian Rock Band

FOR YEARS most people have experienced African music via Hollywood as something mysterious, primitive, even threatening; or, courtesy of social scientists, as something arcane, exotic and ultimately unintelligible. Lately, new wave bands (most famously Talking Heads) have been exploiting one or the other of these distortions, going so far, in one instance ('Burundi Black'), as to use an ethno-musicological rendering of Burundi (some would say tribal, I would say traditional) drumming. Yet there's a continent full of popular music styles that has nothing to do with such images. A whole lot of young African musicians are creating a new music.