Filed under: Egypt
♬ Abdel Monim Madboly • Tayeb Ya Sabr Tayeb
♬ Mounir Mourad • The Factory Theme
The guest post for this week is by Hany Zaki – my man in Cairo. I am not quite sure how I originally got in touch with Hany. I think it may have been that Baligh Hamdy single. But once I mentioned Omar Khorshid, we hit it off and have been in contact ever since. Besides being an encyclopedia of Egyptian music, he runs a website dedicated to Omar Khorshid.
The simple concept of friends stealing for an evil boss who meet someone who wants to straighten them out and make a musical show about their lives. This was the basic idea of the last quality musical of the 70s titled Mold Ya Donia (What A Bewildered World) that was a box office smash in 1976.
The film, which stared the singer Afaf Rady, was highly produced by Baligh Hamdy, who had a number of hit singles a few years earlier. They were joined by a comic actor, Abdel Monim Madboly, who ironically performs a melancholic song moaning and crying about the good old times of being a carriage driver. The title name is Tayeb Ya Sabr Tayeb, and he appears in his stable drunk and whipping all over the place while he sadly sings… Surprisingly, it was a big hit for a soundtrack and deserved a single release and was filmed for TV later.
On the other side two themes appear, titled The Factory Theme and Train Whistle Theme, adding cheerful unmistaken 70s beat of organ and percussion. Both were composed by Mounir Mourad, who was a pretty underrated multi-talented artist coming from a Jewish background with an artistic family of singers. Mounir Mourad was also a singer, as well as an actor and director but was most famous as a composer who made a new happy sound to the Middle Eastern ears thanks to his talents plus his wide knowledge of international music. He composed to almost every singer from the 50s till he died in 1980.
Catalog number XSP 460 / 31-76009 – 45 S 230 on Soutelfan of Cairo, Egypt. Released 1976.
Filed under: Dahomey
♬ Winoukin
In Benin, records must grow on trees. For such a small country, there seems to be hundreds of records from there – and most of them are really good. There were loads of small labels both in Benin and in neighboring Nigeria. And in 1973, the Societé Africaine de Techniques Electroniques – or SATEL – pressing plant opened it’s doors on the highway between Cotonou and Porto Novo, which became one of the most popular pressing plans in all of Western Africa.
One of those labels was Albarika Store, which was also then name of a chain of record stores, was ran by Seidou Adissa. Samy Ben Redjeb interviewed Celestin Houenou Seza, who was Adissa’s right hand man, for the liner notes of the African Scream Contest compilation on Analog Africa.
I was giving lessons to Adissa’s children during holidays and I guess I made a good impression on him because as soon as I finished school in 1969 he asked me to help him to manage his new project. He loved traditional music from his tribe, the Yoruba and he wanted to produce a few artists and see if he could make a business out of it. The first artist recorded was Yedenou Adjahaoi, who was the most popular traditional artist in the region. His first single was recorded in Nigeria and distributed by Badejo in 1968. That record was a hit. As a consequence Adissa came to see me and offered me a chance to join his music company. I had just finished school and was a seventeen-year-old boy full of ambition and he was a great businessman who couldn’t read or write. He showed me the whole procedure – from the recording to the pressing plants via the distribution network, and by the time we did our first modern recording. which was by Gnonnas Pedro, I knew how to run the whole label by myself.
In 1969 the students from the University of Porto Novo were going crazy for a track from Ghana called Sock It to Me (by The Super Eagles) and they were bombarding us with requests. We never experienced that kind of reaction so we were wondering what kind of song could that be? So I traveled to Accra to buy a small stock of that record which we would resell in Dahomey. I purchased about a hundred 45s, and in two days they were all gone. We didn’t want to go back to Accra to get some more. Instead, we thought of recording our own version for the Benin market. El Rego had a guy called Eddy Black Power who could do that kind of stuff, so we approached him. We left for Lagos with El Rego et Ses Commandos where they recorded four songs We sold three thousand copies of the title Feeling You Got (the cover version of Sock It To Me) which was a huge success at the time, so we decided to look for the band members of the Super Eagles to buy a license. Despite many trips to Ghana we never managed to find them Then, one day we found out they were actually from Gambia!
A few months later we signed Orchestre Poly-Rythmo. Adissa wanted the song Angelina, so we traveled to Lagos for a recording; that was in early 1970. Adissa hadn’t even noticed the other songs we recorded that day, but I felt something would happen with the track Gbeti Madjro. Man, it spread like wildfire. We sold a lot – not sure how many, but a lot. I believe that song revolutionized the music industry in this country.
At that time we had decided not just to focus on bands from Porto Novo, or Cotonou, but also to travel all over the country to locate and record the best bands. I was in charge of those kinds of operations – I was actually in charge of everything, but that’s the part I am most proud of. I would travel to every corner of Benin looking for groups. In Parakou, which is located in the northeast of the country we bumped into an excellent band led by Alidou Boukari called Anassoua Jazz, Their first recording with us was a Jerk called Fatouma Na Alidou recorded in 1971. We had huge success in the Borgou state with that one, which encouraged other bands from the region to seek our production.
One day I found (Moussa) Mama Franco in front of my door. He explained that he had a group called Super Borgou de Parakou, and that he wanted us to record them, Moussa seemed to be a serious guy with a positive attitude, so I traveled back with him, and found out that the band was having enormous success with its live performances. They had an incredible drum’ mar I forgot his name, and their lead singer had a golden voice; we used to call him “Saka”. It was with Super Borgou that we made our first extended play 7” inch record. Some of the bands we recorded over the years were rebels and I spent a lot of time checking the lyrics and censoring offensive words I had to make sure the songs could be played on the radio. When El Rego covered Sock It to Me, I changed the tide to Feeling You Got. Some of the groups we produced simply didn’t want us to touch to any of their lyrics, so we would just drop the title and get on with our business. But to release a song with naughty lyrics would have given us bad press, and my job as to make sure that didn’t happen.
This interview is just about the only mention of Orchestre Anassoa Jazz de Parakou. The only other information that I have been able to find is that the main person behind the band was Alidou Boukari – who would later go on to form Orchestre Anos Band. Also, Orchestre Anassoa Jazz de Parakou released at least two other singles, both on the Albarika Store label.
Catalog number ASB29 on Albarika Store of Lagos, Nigeria. No release date listed.
Filed under: India
Information. Much like history, it depends on who you ask. And everyone has different story. You know the saying, “written in stone”? Well, it’s not a solid thing. It’s very fluid. You pick up little bits here and there, learning as you go. And just when you think you’ve got it, something will come along and change what you think you know.
It goes completely against the obsessive compulsive nature of the record collector. There’s supposed to be a list. You get all the records on the list, and then you’re done. Mission accomplished. But when it comes to records from far flung corners of the world, it’s not that simple.
I thought I had all of the information I needed when I wrote the liner notes for the Bollywood Steel Guitar disc for Sublime Frequencies. I was positive that I had found every steel guitar player in India and had included them in the compilation. I was wrong.
Even though I asked everyone I could find about the players and their records, I still did not have all of the pieces of the puzzle. Since then, I have discovered a whole slew of other players – some only recorded Classical Tagore songs, but others recorded Filmi songs as well – dating back to the 40s all of the way up to the present. Besides Kazi Aniruddha, Kazi Arindam, Gautam Dasgupta, Sunil Ganguly, S. Hazarasingh, Charanjit Singh and Van Shipley – who were included on the Bollywood Steel Guitar disc – there was Mohon Bhattacharya, Himanshu Biswas, Barum Kumar Pal, Batuk Nandy, Sujit Nath, Robin Paul, Dipankar Sen Gupta… And who knows? There could be more.
As I have said before, there is no book you can go look this stuff up in. Well, that may not be true. But if there is one, I’m not the only one looking for it – especially when it comes to records from India. Karl-Michael Schneider maintains a site that is trying to catalog all of the releases that were issued by the The Gramophone Company Ltd. While there were other small labels like Hindusthan and Megaphone up until about the 40s and then Concord, Polydor and Super Cassettes popped up in the 80s, The Gramophone Company of India had a virtual monopoly on recordings in India for almost all of the 1900s. According to the Society of Indian Record Collectors, it has been estimated that during the last century that about half a million different titles were released in India. And since they were pressed in numbers from as few five hundred to a few hundred thousand copies – many of these recordings remain unheard by more than just a few people.
As for Barum Kumar Pal, this seems to be his only release. Of course… I could be wrong.
Catalog number 2392 899 on Polydor of India, released 1979.
Filed under: Sudan
While many people debate the superiority of vinyl over compact disc – or vice versa, the true format in many corners of the globe is the cassette. Thought to be extinct, banished like it’s elder cousin the 8 track and replaced by the CD-R, cassettes still remain popular to this day.
Since some countries did not have record industries or pressing plants, the primary way to distribute music was by cassettes that were copied. Only recently has copying CDs has become inexpensive, but dubbing cassettes has always been easy. Also, in many other countries there was a gap between when vinyl was popular and CDs became affordable. And during that time, there is a vast amount of music that was released – some of which you can find on other sites like Awesome Tapes from Africa, Fish Stalls in the Pear River Delta and Monrakplengthai.
Another reason for the continued popularity of cassettes, is that unlike turntables and CD players, tape decks can usually take more abuse – especially while in use. They also tend to be more affordable than the other machines. And while cassettes themselves can be temperamental, they do hold up to the elements fairly well compared against other formats.
Cassettes are still available online and in shops around the world. Recently while in Singapore and Indonesia, every music shop that I visited had cassette racks – many of which were copies on blank 60 minute tapes. And online, you can find many releases, including Omar Khorshid’s first album, which has never been issued on disc.
If you have any information about Sedeek Metwaly (also seen transliterated as Sadek Metwaly) or the Munsphone label, please contact me. You can find another track (as well a couple of Alèmayehu Eshété tunes) over at Yawning and Balafon.
Catalog number MUNS 602-86075 on Munsphone of Sudan, no other information available.
Filed under: Thailand
The guest post for this week is by Angela Sawyer. If I weren’t spending all my money on the records you see here, I’d be buying up all kinds of great stuff from her Weirdo Records site. Angela is also the person behind the truly bizarre Cantonese Opera blog – Fish Stalls in the Pearl River Delta. When I asked a few folks if they wanted to write for my site, Angela had hers to me lickety split.
Although the post-it which came with this record identifies it as String Band music, Suriya Fapathum was in fact a rather obscure Luk Thung singer. Even if you’re quite familiar with the Thai language (which I’m not), information about this record is extremely scant.
Luk Thung arose after the end of WWII, blending together folk songs, classical music and folk dances, and echoing the emotional concerns of rural Thais. Luk Thung is often compared to the country music of the USA, and Suphanburi is the genre’s Nashville. Early stars include king and queen Suraphon Sombatjalern and Pongsri Woranuch. It’s usually molasses slow, and the focus is meant to be on the singer as he or she stretches vowel sounds like taffy.
As the Vietnam war sped up the urbanization and modernization of Thailand, hordes of people began to move to cities, especially Bangkok. This process both fostered and hampered Luk Thung: creating access to up to date music equipment and distribution, creating a populace with some money who missed the countryside, but also eroding the very community life the songs reflected. During the 60s and 70s the style blended over and over again with Mo Lam and Thai pop. Influences started popping up from the rest of Southeast Asia, as well as American pop like Gene Autry and Hank Williams, and even such far flung stuff as Xavier Cugat. By the 1980s Luk Thung sported an entire techno-ish subgenre meant specifically for danceclubs, and by 2000 ‘real’ 50s Luk Thung began enjoying a wave of retro hep.
Although there are some slow funk burners on this lp, I chose these two songs for their unusual use of sound effects. In one, the singer imitates a monkey, and in the other the sound of gunshots is heard. I’m especially fond of the ‘ptchoo ptchoo’ mouth sounds the singer makes, presumably to beef up the gunfire. Such gunfire would have been heard by folks in rural Thailand due to the increased involvement in the Vietnam War and growing US military presence that military dictator Thanom Kittikachorn allowed in his campaign against communist guerillas during the 1960s. The corruption of this government eventually resulted in a growing peasant’s movement, and then the October 14, 1973 student democracy uprising.
Much thanks to Peter Doolan of Monrak Pleng Thai for tranlisteration help. All helpful ideas were his, and all mistakes mine.
Catalog number T 148 on ห้างแผ่นเสียง ทองกำ จัดจำหน่าย (Haang Phaen Siiang Thaawng Gam Jat Jam Naay – which means something like ‘Grab the Golden Sound and Arrange to Distribute it’) of Thailand. No release date listed.
Filed under: Pakistan
♬ Malkaus
♬ Bihag
When researching the music that is featured on this site, there are usually many more questions than answers. As I type this in an airport in Indonesia – having spent the last four days fruitlessly searching for someone who even knows what a record is – information, even more so than the records themselves, is hard to find.
But over the years, I have occasionally heard from a number of the artists that I have written about. In those rare instances, there are moments of clarity and a few more pieces of the puzzle fall into place… Of course they usually ask me, how did you find out about this stuff and why do you care?
Back in December of 2008 when I posted a song by The Bugs from Pakistan, the floodgates opened. O.K., that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I was contacted by a handful of musicians who had been in bands in Pakistan during the late 60s into the early 70s. Two of them – Ahsan Sajjad and Fasahat Hussein Syed – were in The Panthers.
Radiodiffusion Internasionaal: Most people don’t realize that Pakistan had such a great scene with quite a few bands. Besides The Bugs, The Fore Thoughts, The Mods, The Silhouettes and The Thunders, do you recall any other bands from that time?
Ahsan Sajjad: The bands were The Black Pirates, Talismen, In Crowd, Moonglows and an older band called The Keynotes before the surge.
RI: When and where did the band get together?
AS: We got together in the year of ‘67 in Karachi. It started with Norman and myself and then we went looking for other members. We had played around with different players but the two of us stuck together. When we released Folk Tunes and had a sit in, Javaid Allahditta, play the sitar we realized we had to go get a sitar player and make him a member. I had known Eric (bass player) for a while and had jammed with him. So I invited him to join us and to switch from lead to bass and then met Fasahat who played the sitar and was versatile on the keyboard. There was the formation of “The Panthers”.
RI: Who was in the band, and what instruments did they play?
AS: Norman Braganza on lead guitar and vocals, Fasahat Hussein on sitar, keyboard and tabla, Eric Fernandes on bass and Ahsan Sajjad on drums and lead vocals.
RI: Which record was recorded first, Folk Tunes of Pakistan on Electric Star and Western Instruments or East Goes West? Do you recall which years those records were released?
AS: Folk Tunes first and then in June 1969 EMI released East Goes West. East Goes West shows the versatility of the band. This was a well thought out record where local instruments and ragas were utilized as a modern day tune and to show the meeting of the East tunes and West beats/tempo. The bands ability and creativity also comes forth as they employ different beats in sync with the ragas. Sarangi is utilized an instrument that is a very much into the Indo/Pak culture as the intro to each of the three ragas has a very Eastern tone and creates a haunting melody.
RI: What type of venues did The Panthers perform in Pakistan? Was there a night club scene like?
Fasahat Hussein Syed: The first performance of The Panthers was at “Mahapara” outdoors lounge at the swimming pool of Midway Hotel near the airport. We got a contract in the same hotel ballroom afterward. We also played at the Metropolitan Hotel, with some other bands (do not remember the occasion), played at San Patrick’s High School.
AS: Venues were limited… So most bands played at house parties and at the limited outlets.
RI: I recently saw a copy of The Fore Thoughts first single that was pressed in Iran. Did The Panthers ever perfrom outside of Pakistan?
AS: Never made it out of Pakistan. But performed and recorded for Radio Pakistan a tune that was used for their foreign broadcast. The music had to be danceable as that is how the public understood its fancy. But this was also in its infancy and was being perfected as it was being performed or as the target to learn harder songs grew.
RI: Fasahat, you said that The Panthers broke up when Ahsan left for America. That’s when you and Eric joined The Black Pirates with Bashir Balouch from The Fore Thoughts. How long were The Black Pirates together?
FHS: After Ahsan left for United States, Eric and myself joined The Black Pirates, we played for a fashion show in Metropolitan Hotel, we played at Adamji Auditorium at the Marine Engineers Graduation Party in 1970. I joined the Merchant Marines and left the country, group was broken up. After four years, I signed off from Merchant Marines and joined The Black Pirates again with some new members and played in Horse Shoe Restaurant Lounge on a contract. After the contract expired, group broke up again. I left the group to pursue a Marine Engineering Career and eventually migrated to United States in 1979.
RI: What have the members been up to lately? Are you still involved in music?
AS: Norman lives in Mississauga, Canada and is very much into Rhythm and Blues, performs guitar and sings at invitational parties and has put out a CD for friends, doing cover tunes. Fasahat plays keyboard and tabla with a fusion band called Tulsi out of Chattanooga, TN. Me, I am still honing my skills on the guitar. Have performed locally at invitations. Very much into Folk/Blues. Working on putting a performing band.
Thanks to Ahsan Sajjad and Fasahat Hussein Syed for their help.
Catalog number EKCE-20016 on EMI / Columbia Records of Pakistan, released 1969.
Filed under: Senegal
Senegalese popular music can be traced back to the 1960s, when nightclubs hosted dance bands that played Western music. Star Band was the most famous orchestre. After beginning by playing American, Cuban and French songs, Star Band gradually added more indigenous elements, including the talking tama drum and Wolof (Senegal’s predominant dialect) or Mandinka language lyrics. Star Band disintegrated into numerous groups, with Number One du Senegal being the best known of the next wave of bands, followed by the still active Orchestre Baobab.
In 1975, Omar Pene (also seen spelled Oumar Pène) formed Le Diamono in Dakar. The band fused mbalax rhythms and militant populism with blues, jazz and reggae influences. The other members at the time included Dama Faye (guitar), Baila Theophile (bass), Samba Dieng (keyboards), Almamy Bary (tenor sax, flute), Thierno Kouate (alto sax), Mamadou Mbengue (drums), Xalifa Fall (vocal, percussion), Baye Diagne (vocal), Bassirou Diagne (vocal), Papa Mboup (vocal, percussion).
Le Diamono released an album and this single in their first year, before changing their name to Super Diamono du Senegal, and then Super Diamono de Dakar. By the Eighties they had shortened it to Super Diamono, until recently when they became known as Omar Pene Et Le Super Diamono. They are still active to this day.
Catalog number SP 10513 on Musiclub/Soul Posters of France. No release date listed.
Filed under: Indonesia
Dangdut, Gamelan, Jaipongan, Krontjong, Orkes Gambus, Qasidah Modern… What is it about Indonesia that makes the music their so unique?
Indonesia is a very diverse country. Just about every one of the 17,508 islands has its own cultural and artistic history that are the result of distinct ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. The archipelago has been an important trade region since at least the seventh century, when the Srivijaya Kingdom traded with China and India. Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms flourished, until Muslim traders brought Islam to the region.
The first Europeans arrived in Indonesia in 1512, when Portuguese traders sought to monopolize the sources of nutmeg, cloves and cubeb pepper in Maluku. Dutch and British traders soon followed. In 1602, the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company and became the dominant European power. Following bankruptcy of the Dutch East India Company in 1800, the government of the Netherlands established the Dutch East Indies as a nationalized colony.
All of these different cultures – both native and foreign – collided to produce an endless variety of amazing music. Much of it has been documented and recorded, but not all of it. Research by Indonesian and international scholars is still ongoing.
One of these variations was known as Instrumentalia, which was also popular in Malaysia and Singapore. Band 4 Nada, or “4 Tones Band”, were one of the first and more popular Instrumentalia bands in Indonesia. They took the instrumental rock sounds of The Shadows and The Ventures, and mixed it with other indigenous types of music, to create a new sound quite unlike anything else. Band 4 Nada were occasionally the backing band for singers such as Ernie Djohan, Lilis Suryani, Pattie Bersaudara and Titiek Sandhora. The main guy was A. Riyanto, who later went on to form The Favorite’s Group. Apparently, Jopie Item – of Trio Bintang – was a member at some point during the history of the band. Also, this album contains covers of several Koes Plus songs.
Catalog number SKL. 003 on Sakura Records of Indonesia Manufactured by Republic Manufacturing Co. Ltd (Remaco). No release date listed.
Filed under: Turkey
This week’s guest post is by Jonathan Ward. Much like myself, Jonathan is afflicted with a rare strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder known as “record collector-itis”. But his case is much more severe, being that he collects 78s. He has put this adversity to good use with the truly amazing Excavated Shellac. The writing on his site is consistently entertaining and well researched – and puts my barely coherent ramblings to shame. Be sure to check out his Dublab session – it’s the next best thing to having him come over to your house with a stack of 78s.
I was very happy when Stuart at Radiodiffusion asked me if I’d like to provide a guest post. First, because his blog is a fascinating source of hard to find international music, and second, because it brings me out of my little world of 78rpm records featured in my own Excavated Shellac. I thought I’d throw out an important Turkish single from the era of “Anadolu Pop” (Anatolian Pop) – the influential and groundbreaking style of Turkish rock which combined both psychedelic and progressive rock influences with traditional folkloric elements.
This genre of music has been discovered and exploited by various stateside and overseas reissue companies over the past five years or so – with good reason. It’s fantastic! I suppose the US-based craze started with three compilations, Hava Narghile (Dionysus), Turkish Delights (Grey Past), and a Turkish volume of the ongoing Love, Peace & Poetry series (Shadoks). Since then, Finders Keepers has released volumes by Mustafaz Özkent, Selda, and Ersen, Shadoks has released CDs of Bunalim and Edip Akbayram, World Psychedelic has reissued important LPs by 3 Hür-el, Bülent, Erkin Koray, and Moğollar.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean the genre is tapped out. Turkey was a singles-based music industry until the mid-70s or so, and there are lots of artists that haven’t yet gone through the hipster reissue machine (Bariş Manço, for instance, hasn’t gotten his US compilation yet – though Madlib’s brother Oh No has been sampling him for quite a while). One of these is the short-lived Ağri Daği Efsanesi.
Ağri Daği Efsanesi was an early-70s collaboration lasting just two singles, between Nejat Teksoy, a member of the garage-y rock band Mavi Işiklar, and the legendary Murat Ses, keyboardist and original member of the renowned band Moğollar (“The Mongols”), widely considered the founding fathers of Anadolu Pop (and inventors of the term itself). To understand the origins of Anadolu Pop, the first two groundbreaking LPs by Moğollar would be the place to start – and Murat Ses arranged the bulk of those songs. Moğollar ‘s first LP, released by Guilde Internationale du Disque in France and titled Les Danses et Rythmes de la Turquie d’hier á aujourd’hui under the French version of their name, “Les Mogol,” was released in Turkey under the name Anadolu Pop, in fact. On it, psychedelic rock mixed with saz and davul, keyboards and organ mixed with Anatolian fiddle playing – this was an album that helped spawn a whole movement.
Murat Ses stayed with Moğollar until about 1972. Sometime around this time he formed Ağri Daği Efsanesi, named after a track on the first Moğollar LP and meaning “The Legend of Mount Ararat,” while also contributing to singles by Bariş Manço (Lambaya Püf De) and Edip Akbayram (Kaşlarin Karasina) throughout the 70s. He eventually left Turkey in the late 1970s and moved to Linz, Austria, where he received both a Masters and a Doctorate in Economics. He continues to release music today.
Catalog number DT 5089 on Diskotur of Turkey, released 1972.
Filed under: Seychelles
The Republic of Seychelles, is an archipelago nation of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some 930 miles east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar. Other nearby island countries and territories include Zanzibar to the west, Mauritius and Réunion to the south, Comoros and Mayotte to the southwest, and the Suvadives of the Maldives to the northeast. Seychelles has the smallest population of any state in Africa.
While Austronesian seafarers or Arab traders may have been the first to visit the uninhabited Seychelles, the first recorded sighting of them took place in 1502, by the Portuguese Admiral Vasco da Gama, who passed through the Amirantes and named them after himself (islands of the Admiral). The first recorded landing and first written account was by the crew of the English East Indiaman Ascension in 1609. As a transit point for trading between Africa and Asia, they were occasionally used by pirates.
Formerly a colony of both Britain and France, The Seychelles has developed a distinct kind of music – incorporating multiple influences, including English Contredanse, Polka and Mazurka, French folk and pop, Sega from Mauritius and Réunion, Taarab, Soukous, Moutya and other pan-African genres of and Polynesian, Indian and Arcadian music. A complex form of percussion music called Contombley is popular, along with combinations of Sega and Reggae called Seggae as well as combinations of Moutya and Reggae called Mouggae and Montea which is a fusion of native folk rhythms with Kenyan Benga.
As for John Wirtz and Les Boys, there is not a whole lot of information available. They were both included on the Buda Musique compilation Music From the Seychelles – but not together. There’s one song by John Wirtz, and another by Pye (also known as Georgie Romain) & Les Boys. I have also seen Souvenir of Seychelles: The Best of John Wirtz and His New Les Boys on Ray’s Music Room. If you any information about the band, please contact me.
Catalog number TCE 1008 on Tam’s Cinema of Mahé, Seychelles. No release date listed.
