African Guitarist Retrospective

With the release of "Francophonic", the Congolese singer-guitarist-bandleader François Luambo has finally got the retrospective he deserves. During his performing years he performed as "Franco". He was widely regarded as one of the greatest African musicians of the twentieth century and has been dubbed the "James Brown of Africa" and a "sorcerer of the guitar".

The album starts with a track from his first recording session in 1953 at the age of 15 and ends with a 1980 workout whose title translates as "I Don't Like You".

The two-disc set contains excellent liner notes which give fascinating facts about the music. For example : most of Franco’s international audience assumed the exquisite 1973 recording “AZDA” was a love song; it was actually a jingle for a Zairean Volkswagen dealership!

Links :

1) Buy the album here

2) Read more about the artist here

3) Download "AZDA" for $0.99

High-School Musical Rip-Off - Not Christianity's Finest Hour!

As someone who has spent many years around Christian ministry to children and teenagers, I was horrified to find a post on SingPraise.co.za detailing how Asylum Studios intend releasing what is clearly an attempt to cash in on the success of Disney Studio's High School Musical.

A look at the packaging and graphics shows how blatant the copying is. If you took out the title "Sunday School Musical", the poster could be mistaken for a sequel to the Disney show. It reeks of squeaky-clean evangelical puritanism.

The Christian dollar is powerful and Asylum Studios should be ashamed of themselves for putting money ahead of ethics no matter how pressing the evangelical imperative.

Teenagers are increasingly wary of having the wool pulled over their eyes. This attempt to bring them to Christ through the imitation of a secular success will, I believe, be seen by many young people as an attempt to hoodwink them!