Chords for (Part 1) African Fingerstyle Guitar with John Low

_ _ Hi, I'm John Lowe and this lesson is about African finger styles on the guitar
_ These styles became popular all over East Africa in the 50s and 60s
_ [F] This is a time of great social change in Africa
It was a time of colonialism and people were being pulled into the wage economy off the land away from their herds
Working in jobs in towns like Nairobi
_ Lubumbashi
_ Lusaka and other towns in eastern central Africa
_ _ Those that could spare a bit of money could buy guitars which were becoming available in
shops all over Africa gallo the big [G#] recording company in South [F#] Africa were marketing cheap guitars and
Anybody who had pretensions to being a musician could buy a guitar and sit around at home working out [G#] how to play it
They took ideas of course from abroad with from cultures and countries which already [C] had guitars
But they also [G] included African ideas as we'll see during this lesson
_ [F] _
Like country blues players country blues players in the US
People played in bars at weddings at funerals at parties and a few of them made it to the top and became recording stars
Some became famous in their own country
_ Others became international stars becoming known all over Africa and beyond these were people like John Wendell Bosco
Lost a bellow and Edward Massenger whose songs we'll be looking at later on in the lesson _
I was born [E] in Africa
I [G#] grew up in Kenya and these songs that we'd be looking at with a pop music of
Those days when I was a young kid in Africa
_ I then moved away from Africa and I got [F#] hold of some of Hugh Tracy's wonderful records of acoustic guitar styles
And I started playing them then in 1979.
I started hankering after Africa
I bought a couple of guitars a rucksack a cheap tape recorder and I took off round
_ Zaire Zambia Tanzania Malawi
meeting as many musicians as I could recording learning
About half the songs we'll be doing are songs that I recorded and worked with [G#] directly with those musicians
The other ones I took [G] from tapes records and so forth _
Right.
Let's listen to the [F#] first song
The first song is by lost a [G#] bellow one of the great guitarists of that time from Zaire and he's playing it
He he made a song called [A] one Yuma _
This is the name of a woman that he fell in love with and the song tells us that she had as [G] neck as beautiful
As a sword she had eyes like stars and teeth as white as rice
[F#] I'm playing the song with Keith who plays a rhythm on a bottle because in those days percussion was provided [G#] provided by a bottle
which helped the dancers to know when to come in [B] and
France [G] is singing a an accompanying part with me this [G#] these these [Am] two are
[G] Included to give it an authentic [E] kind of feel _ right.
Let's it's time now to to carton and and listen to my new
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little food
I [C#] _ _
leave Katana you live on a [G#] come on be an end [C#] as I go
[G#] Me she could I can wait.
[C#] Yeah, man _
[G#] Me not bend our [C#] feet _ _
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[C#] _ When you _ _ _
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[Fm] I'm going [C#] _ _ [G#] _
_ _ [C#] to be doing a lot of work on this.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work on this.
[Fm] I'm going to be doing a lot of [C#] work on this.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work on this.
[G#] I'm going to _ [C#] _ _ [Fm] be doing a lot of [C#] work on this.
_ [G#] I'm going to be doing a lot of work on this.
[C#] _ I'm going to be doing [Fm] a lot of work on [C#] this.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work _ _ [G#] _
on [C#] this.
I'm going to be doing a lot of work on this.
_ [G#] I'm going to be doing a lot [C#] of work on this. _ _ _ _ _
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