The Magnificient Zeinians

April 18, 2010, 12:32 am
Filed under: Nigeria

I was recently asked if there was any sense of community among my fellow bloggers – a term I not quite fond of, but there just isn’t any other way to say it. The question was specifically aimed at the other folks out there who focus on the music of Africa. And at the time, I said ‘No’. But as I started working on this post, I realized that I have had some kind contact – directly or indirectly – with just about everyone who posts music from the Dark Continent on my links page. I think the only ones on there that I have not had any contact with would be the people behind Awesome Tape from Africa, Voice of America’s African Music Treasures and the World Service sites.

But I am not so sure that I would use the term ‘Community’. The word that does come to mind is ‘Competition’. Finding the records to post – ones that have not been compiled by the likes of Miles Cleret‘s Soundway Records and Samy Ben Redjeb‘s Analog Africa labels or posted on sites like John Beadle’s Likembe, Frank Gossner’s Voodoo Funk, Uchenna Ikonne’s With Comb & Razor plus the sites listed above – is becoming harder and harder. But that’s not to say that the well has run dry.

The Magnificient Zeinians were apparently the first band by Tony Grey – who wrote both of the songs on this record. I have seen one other single by the band, with the song ‘Ije Udo’ on the A side and ‘She’s My Love’ on the flip. Tony Grey went on to record with a band called The Ozimba Messengers. According to With Comb & Razor, he was supposedly known for wearing headpieces with tiger skin and feathers on stage, but is now currently a gospel singer. I had thought maybe that the Ngozi in the song’s title might have referred to Zambia‘s Paul Ngozi, but come to find out that ngozi is the Igbo word for “blessing”.

Catalog number HNS 1513 on HMV of Nigeria, no release date given.