Words by Justin Turford
An entirely new form of African dance music from the imagination and fingers of one man? Sounds inconceivable but apparently it’s true. That man is Jantra (a name given to him that translates as ‘craziness’), a near mythic character who turns up to events with his blue Yamaha synthesiser around his hometown Gedarif on the troubled Sudan-Ethiopia border (a disputed area called Fashaga) and plays and plays and plays for hours on end with no written songs, just irresistible cosmic jams that emanate from Jantra and his synth.
Jantra - Party in DarGoog, Sudan (© Ostinato Records)
The ace New York label Ostinato Records has long been a champion of rare sounds from the ‘Horn Of Africa’ region (also known officially as the Somali Peninsular) with essential collections of music from Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan (as well as killer compilations from Cabo Verde and Senegal), so outside of a local entrepreneurial music impresario (none stepped forward), who better to expose this ‘Jaglara’ sound to the wider world?
The African continent has become the hyperactive centre of new electronic dancing music in recent years - no longer just the ‘victim’ of mass cultural theft, the emerging genres from across this great landmass are thriving with their own vision and on their own terms. From the soaring commercial success of Nigerian Afrobeats or South Africa’s Amapiano scenes to the wild disturbances of Tanzania’s Singeli and the outsider electronic brutalism of Nyege Nyege in Uganda, the availability of cheaper (or free) software and the instant global distribution network of the internet has made stars of multitudes of African artists and generated ruptures in the established ‘Western’ electronic music industry. However, not everything is captured on TikTok. In the case of Jantra’s heavenly synth music, very little was known about him or in fact, the performances that he did. One knew about when his parties were to happen or you didn’t. The word of mouth was strong though, strong enough to reach the ears of frequent visitors and researchers Ostinato Records.
“To produce this album, the Ostinato team pioneered a new approach: a hybrid reissue contemporary album. Jantra had made a few cassette and digital recordings in his early days. We used excerpts from those and followed him to his legendary parties on the outskirts of the outskirts of the capital. Using a special technique devised by Ostinato producer Janto Koité, we extracted the individual melodic patterns, rhythms, as well as the MIDI data, and combined them with older recordings to recreate his lengthy sessions into individual dance tracks for a worldwide audience to reach the enviable frenzy of Sudanese crowds. This promising new dance music emerging from the deepest reaches of Sudan has never made its way outside of Jantra’s parties, let alone outside of the country, and never been professionally recorded.”
The music itself reminds me (just a touch) of the Saharan keyboard songs of Niger’s Mamman Sani Abdullaye or the psychedelic organ sounds of Morocco’s Abdou El Omari - partly because of the keyboards plus percussion aesthetic but also its ability to sound both modern and yet of its culture, its location and its past. Jantra’s peculiar sonic fingerprint does all of these things. His rejigged Yamaha keyboard captures the particular tunings of Sudanese music, Jantra creating a funky and sensual body music with a celestial melodic reverie that is transcendental like all the best dance music seems to be.
Bravo to Ostinato Records for bringing Jantra’s ecstatic musical imagination into a wider light. I for one, shall be happily playing Jantra’s music to audiences everywhere this year, expecting that same physical and emotional response from the dancers as I first felt when hearing his hallucinatory grooves. May Sudan feel peace again soon. 10/10.