Guns, floods and 45s: Mr Bongo spill the beans on five of the label’s most important reissues

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ck mann

C.K Mann & His Carousel 7
Funky Highlife

This is a massive record for hip hop guys in America. This was the first one – the straight funk break, this track ‘Asafo Beesuon’. It’s on a little label called Essiebons In Ghana, and there’s a lovely old guy called Dick who runs the label. He’s about 80 now and of course he hasn’t even got the tapes or anything.

wear and damp

In Ghana you don’t have record shops, you just have people who sit them in their houses, and they don’t have cupboards, so the records will all be sitting on the floor, really dusty. Not that humid like in Brazil, you get a lot of humidity damage, but in Ghana… the quality of Ghanaian records is appalling. Even with the one we’ve done, it’s not ideal because you just haven’t got a good enough copy.