Lapwong (Freedom Fighters)

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Cat No: IRL085

Release Date: 13 October 2014

Label: IRL

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 5060155721576

Genres: World Music

Description
Brand new release on the IRL Label. (Home to Malawi Mouse Boys, Tinariwen).

Through the acquaintance of a reformed child-soldier, Grammy-winning producer, author, and intrepid discoverer of new music, Ian Brennan (Malawi Mouse Boys, Tinariwen, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Good Ones [Rwanda], etc.), has discovered a group of musicians from the Acholi tribe on the northern border of Uganda. Acholi Machon (meaning "Old Acholi") release their debut album, 'Lamwong', on Monday 6th October on IRL Records.

Acholi Machon is a band that often swells to 15 members, arriving to the recording riding tandem on motorcycles, helmetless, and having crossed over 100 miles of bumpy dirt roads. They are led by singer Gaetano Otira Tep Yer Yer, a small man with a hunched back due to having injured himself as a child by falling from a tree. He is a prolific writer of songs, usually topical: "Poisoned U.N. Food", "Leaders You Should Look Out For The People's Benefit", "Who'll Build Good Roads For Us?" and always from the heart, "I Choose Love".

"I cannot sing unless there is meaning. The song has to be about something," he states and his duelling lokembe and vocal partner, Kornelio Odong Mulili, nods in silent agreement.

The Acholis first migrated to northern Uganda from south Sudan in the year 1000 and are part of the Luo group. They are the tribe that were designated the soldier-class by colonial rulers and were forced into countless battles with their neighbours. Joseph Kony, leader of the Lords Resistance Army (the infamous LRA) is an Acholi. In the last fifty years they have endured ongoing conflict - first in Uganda and then from the Arab rulers in north Sudan and they suffer one of the highest mortality rates in the world due to AIDS and malaria.

'Lapwong' is an album of hard-hitting protest songs and there is a strong connection to our own roots music tradition says Ian Brennan, "In a region where you're more likely to hear Willie Nelson or Dolly Parton on the radio than classic rock from America, it becomes clearer how closely connected our roots-music tradition and theirs can be. At the same time, the percussive nature and narrow sonic range of their instruments creates an almost psychedelic sonic tapestry."
Tracklisting