Disco Hi Life

Description

A piece of afro-disco discovered in the early 2000s on a compilation blending "afro beats" and "electro tunes" put together by a trendy hotel in Dakar, the Impala. Eight years later, the Parisian label Hot Casa Records, founded by Djamel Hammadi and Julien Lebrun — the very same person who produced the compilation — reissues the track "Disco Hi Life", composed in 1979 by Nigerian saxophonist Orlando Julius. The musician, active since the late 1950s, was one of the first to fuse highlife — a popular music style in Nigeria and Ghana — with jazz and funk, and later disco. For over twenty years, he toured the United States with Hugh Masekela and Lamont Dozier, among others. Orlando even claims credit for a musical sequence in Lamont's track "Going Back To My Roots", which he says was heavily inspired by his guitar playing on his own track "Ashiko".