"Phew, what a scorcher" is the traditional newspaper headline whenever the UK "swelters" in balmy tropical temperatures of 30 degrees. That's 86 in the transatlantic money, and today, now yesterday, it is supposed to hit that. Already a bit warm and muggy, praise be I am not at work, and can so wallow in it. Part of the process is always to find some applicable and appropriate music to soundtrack the experience. I had even forgot I had this, so it was a delight to rediscover.
It actually hit 32, so try it for size:
Kidjo has become quite the doyenne of so called World music, using her Beninese roots as a template to merge and meld into a melting pot of other styles. Had the political situation in her homeland not been so fractured, who knows whether she would have made her name outside the diaspora of her home, so it is, for us, a blessing she relocated, in 1983, to Paris, the de facto capital of African music worldwide. A bevy of releases have emerged in her name since 1983, ever drawing in bigger names in production and collaboration. Perhaps unfairly, even if I contribute to that, she is better known for her cover versions rather than her own material, or, even, the material of Africa, even if she imbues suchh covers with as authentic a pan-African sheen as can be contrived. Recent years have seen, successively, tributes to the Talking Heads' Remain In Light and to the grande-dame of salsa, Celia Cruz. But her most recent release was a return more to where she started, 2021's Mother Nature, wherein she shares the spotlight with a slew of young African music makers, as well as a few older peers. (O, and Sting?!)
But what of the song that defines this piece? Remember it? I certainly do, being especially taken with it, as a small boy devouring the charts on Top of the Pops.
The Equals were an unusual feature back in the mid to late 60s, being multi-racial, part white british and part african-caribbean. Schoolfriends from a North London housing estate, they had a run of singles, none proving quite as successful as this one. Initially released in 1966, as a B side, it became a hit in continental Europe before being flipped in the UK, becoming a 1968 chart topper. Across the atlantic it fared less well, if still a credible 32 on the Billboard chart. The writer and the main focus of the group was one Eddy Grant, who had a later resurgence of fame in the late 1970s and into the 80's as a solo act and a run of successful singles. Only the churlish would point out they all, to some extent, had broadly the same tune.
