Koka Koka Sex Battalion

Koka Koka Sex Battalion

• Tanzania

On the 2nd of January 1975 a group of musicians walked into Hi-Fi Studio in Nairobi, Kenya, after an all-day and all-night drive from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where they were well-known as the Vijana Jazz Band (vijana meaning ''youth'' in KiSwahili). At Hi-Fi, though, they didn't call themselves the Vijana Jazz Band. They knew that their label wouldn't release any new records until the Vijana Jazz singles already on the market back in Tanzania were played out. The musicians didn't want to wait to get their new songs heard, so they recorded six tracks in Nairobi under a different name: the Koka Koka Sex Battalion.<p>They may have fooled their label (or the label may have decided to go along with the deception), but their fans knew perfectly well whose music was on the new singles. Koka koka was one of the styles that Vijana Jazz was known for in Tanzania, along with rumba and kamata sukuma (''grab 'n' push''), and ''Sex Battalion'' was an epithet that the fans themselves had bestowed on the band. And of course the records sounded like their favorite music.<p>The new Sterns Africa CD is the first Vijana Jazz Band album to be released outside East Africa. It's the 4th in the acclaimed series of classic East African pop albums that Douglas Paterson has compiled and annotated for this label. In addition to two tracks from the incognito session, the set includes several of the band's biggest hits in the 1970s plus some real rarities. All 16 tracks have been remastered from the earliest available sources. The booklet includes translations of the KiSwahili lyrics to each song.