In the late seventies in Somalia, recording equipment was not easy to come by. Label owners would ship their master tapes away to Lebanon and Kenya to be pressed to vinyl, and in the case of Light & Sound of Mogadishu, the records that returned would be sold in owner Dahir Hagil Ali’s lighting fixtures store—hence that label name.
The Sharero Band were just one of the many groups to sell their records alongside Ali’s lamps and light bulbs, and they may have been the hottest, too. “Caashooy,” which is this week’s Funky Friday pick, squirts along on a fast-walking rhythm that gets goosed by an organ that could’ve been ripped whole cloth from Nuggets. We come in in the middle of a rave, bandleader Axmed Naaji stoking his group to a fine boil while singer Ahmed Abukar shifts them into a slightly melancholy bridge. Flecks of hammered guitar fly behind him before the whole thing resolves and goes back to the start. They come around one more time, and after a quick two-and-a-half minutes, the whole thing simmers back down and out of sight. Take a listen below.
“Caashooy” is taken from Light & Sound of Mogadishu, which is out now on Afro7. Click here for more information.
