Prince Buju
Makkum /Red Wig Rec. Prince Buju : We are in the war (GH,2015)**'
Prince Buje (aka Bongo Sa’Abodana) is an African songwriter who has Rastafa roots but definitely has an African voice. Coming from a war zone, his voice and songs the expressions of trying to be a louder voice trying to drown the war noises and mentality. On the gathering/festival song, “Afashee” is like an almost punkish shouting mourning and complaint sort of singing, accompanied by a simple hypnotic rhythm by this 2-string rhythm African guitar called the kologo. It gets here almost calming responses from a second voice on a normal level of a singing voice, as if calming down as soon as the ears of the response are attending and one can be heard, with it, a different mentality. “We are in the war” is one of the two songs or few words in English. Also here, simple chord rhythms on the guitar are played. The rhythms fit the songs and often create a hypnotic effect. They say, once on stage, Prince Buju is unstoppable. Most of the songs show a shouting anger, on the 6th track he must be louder as a voice than firearms, making almost like fire weapon of his voice, with fast rhythms and hypnotic urge. “I am accused”, the fourth song was the most sad song, a bit with a different tension in his voice. The anger mixed with the guitar rhythm is effective, but on the last 5 tracks he remains in this similar mode that this also becomes a bit too much, too often, not overcoming with music the fact that the detailed messages in lyrics we do not understand enough, despite some explanation written on the digipack.
