Jantra's jaglara sound of the Fashaga underground documented on Synthesized Sudan

Ostinato Records has compiled a selection of excerpts from Jantra's cassette releases for Synthesized Sudan out June 16th. 

Here's the scoop...

Near the border of Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, a disputed area called Fashaga is home to one of the most raucous, hypnotic, addictive, and celestial dance musics being made anywhere in Africa, perhaps the least known to the wider world of them all. Far from the townships of South Africa or the cities of Nigeria, this sound belongs to people intimately tied to their land, deep in the rural areas of Sudan. 

Known in some circles as “Jaglara,” this mysterious cosmic dance music is being innovated by one man, Ahmed Mohamed Yaqoup Eltom better known as Jantra, which translates as “craziness,” a moniker bestowed to celebrate both his personality and sound. Jantra cuts a mysterious figure, a rather unknown quantity even in Sudan, outside of the select few circles which have granted him cult status to perform at their humble gatherings or at street parties far from the gaze of the wider world.  

Never without his trusty blue Yamaha keyboard, Jantra joins a wave of synthesizer maestros across Africa revolutionizing the electronic sound of the continent. His dexterous fingers and street side raves in his home town of Gedarif near the Sudan-Ethiopia border caught the attention of a less privileged segment of Sudanese society who became infatuated. But you wouldn’t stumble across one of his parties unless you knew where to look, and they take place where few ever care to look. 

Jantra has no songs. He simply freestyles a combination of his melodies incessantly for hours on end, acting as a live producer and DJ for emphatic crowds in compact spaces, where the energy of his 155-168 BPM music is known to inspire the odd gunslinger to raise his pistol in the middle of the dance floor, ready to fire away a few shots into the air when the build up reaches climax. 

His Yamaha keyboard, like most keyboards, is not made in Africa and not tuned to cater to Sudanese rhythms or melodies. It required special tweaks from legendary keyboard mechanics in Omdurman market outside of the capital Khartoum who service, maintain, and jolt these synths to work for their aesthetics and flavor profile. Jantra then further tweaks the sound to achieve what you’re hearing — the perfect, sweet key tone, literally universal in its appeal. 

To produce this album, the Ostinato team pioneered a new approach: a hybrid reissue-contemporary album. Jantra had made a few cassette and digital recordings in his early days. We used excerpts from those and followed him to his legendary parties on the outskirts of the outskirts of the capital. Using a special technique devised by Ostinato producer Janto Koité, we extracted the individual melodic patterns, rhythms, as well as the MIDI data, and combined them with older recordings to recreate his lengthy sessions into individual dance tracks for a worldwide audience to reach the enviable frenzy of Sudanese crowds. This promising new dance music emerging from the deepest reaches of Sudan has never made its way outside of Jantra’s parties, let alone outside of the country, and never been professionally recorded. 

This record is confirmation that the many electronic styles being exported from Africa have a new worthy sibling and rival — Jantra’s signature electronic Jaglara from the Fashaga underground. 

You can pre-order a copy of Synthesized Sudan via Bandcamp right here. Watch the trailer below. 

New collection explores Star Band de Dakar's Cuban inspiration

Ostinato Records is releasing a 6-track Star Band comp focusing on the influential Senegalese crew's Afro-Cuban jams. 

STAR BAND DE DAKAR: Psicodelia Afro-Cubana de Senegal

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, when the Cuban way won hearts, minds, and ears across Africa. This album is the soundtrack to a time when Cuban music was the future for 1970s Senegal. Led by some of Senegal’s most famous singers, like Youssou N’Dour and Laba Sosseh, the legendary Star Band achieved the perfect gumbo of Cuban and Senegalese sounds. Changüí, Guajira, Salsa, and Son flirt with cosmic Mbalax guitars, Sabar rhythms, Afro-Latin horns, and Spanish vocals spiced with a Senegalese twang.

With just two microphones and a four-track Revox tape recorder, Ibrahim Kassé, Star Band’s founder and owner of Le Miami, recorded their entire catalog in his nightclub. Each album contained one stand-out Afro-Cuban tune, often covers of Cuban classics or original compositions using the deep, layered sound that had evolved over centuries from the roundtrip journey across the Atlantic. Six of Star Band's most psychedelic Afro-Cuban tracks, an ode to their finest hour, were selected for this new compilation, remastered in the original mono on 180-gram heavyweight vinyl in a gatefold sleeve accompanied by a 12 page booklet filled with photos from lead guitarist Yakhya Fall’s personal collection. Listen to "Guajira Ven" and "Misterioso" followed by "Andado" and "Mariama" below. Pre-order a copy right here.