MSA- Mombasa

Mombasa Roots were born as a pop group to entertain tourists on the Kenyan coast, and their hotel-bar beginnings come through pretty clearly on most of the songs on their classic 1987 album Msa — “Jambo Bwana” is still painfully inescapable at the hotels and beach bars of Mombasa, Diana, and Malindi. But at other points their music, which draws on the rhythms and folk songs of Kenya’s coastal people, such as the Mijikenda, is a trippy, hypnotic joy. “Kata” kicks off with the steady pulse of a drum machine, accelerating as more organic percussion is added into the mix, and intensifying with repetitive chanting, hand claps, and whistles. “Disco Chakacha” sounds like a carnival march with its squelchy synths, marching percussion, and jubilant horns, while “Mezea Tu, Lele Mama” blends synth stabs and percussion, creating a ceremonial intensity with more than a touch of 1980s synthetic flair.