It’s always a good sign when you’re out of step with whatever’s out there. Someone who really lived this idea was one Robin Scott. Robin Scott & Shishika’s Jive Shishika! was a curious release that got shelved by a company who had no idea what to think of it. Before Paul Simon’s Graceland or Peter Gabriel’s So, there was this far more astute and brilliant bit of cultural sharing. Somewhere in Kenya, these recordings were put on tape and thought to be on shelved indefinitely. Listening to it, one wonders why?
Robin Scott has always been a bit of an oddball. A Surrey native, he initially got his start as an earnest balladeer in the late ‘60s only to turn up in the mid ‘70s as the member of pub rock group Roogalator. As English ears turned to punk rock, he turned his eyes towards film and music production work, working with groups like The Slits or releasing early albums by Adam and the Ants.
Sometime, in the late ‘70s, Robin would rebuff request by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood to go work with them in their fashion studios and rekindled his own solo career which had laid dormant for a long while. Convening a group of session musicians, including one completely unknown keyboardist (Wally Badarou) and his girlfriend Brigit Novik (the deliberately stunted vocalist of the group), together they conceived his futuristic take on Pop as M. “Pop Muzik”, and it’s accompanying music video — a rarity for its time — skyrocketed Robin into stardom and his off-beat brand of Pop music into the limelight. “Moonlight and Muzak” cemented his leftfield taste for electronic-tinged ear worms. Visions of much monies must have floated in the mind of his record label.
A restless creative soul at heart, Robin completely flipped the script on M’s sophomore release. And with each subsequent release proved even more elusive for casual M fans. From moody ambient Pop, sleazy post-disco, to subversive New Wave or dub ballads, Robin had his own muse to follow — much to the chagrin of whatever record company he’d land with. Around the time of The Official Secrets Act, Robin had begun exchanging albums with Ryuichi Sakamoto and quickly became one of his earliest British fans, a feeling reciprocated by YMO themselves.
In 1981, a year before his third and final release as M, Robin would travel to Tokyo and work intimately with Ryuichi Sakamoto and members of YMO to create what would become their joint collaboration in the Left Handed Dream and in the EP dubbed The Arrangement. On those works, the production by Robin showed a deft touch and understanding of the collaboration, not in terms of co-opting the Japanese techno-kayo sensibility but adding to it that bit of unhinged experimentation that only he could add. This wasn’t East meets West, so much as, the East jumping westward.
On Robin’s third release, Famous Last Words, YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi would return the favor and help this M crew, joined by the likes of Tony Levin, Andy Gill (of Gang of Four), and Thomas Dolby, to take that leap Eastward where few reasonably knew how to land. Tracks like “Honolulu Joe”, “Yellow Magic”, and others still sound remarkably ahead of their time because of the choices afforded to Robin in these times. Sadly, unable to release this record in his own homeland, this record would only see release in France, Japan, and the U.S. (of all places!).
By 1983, Robin was left exiled from any record company. Unable to deliver hits like before, Robin took a sabbatical to Kenya and sought to explore an early love of his: African music. Working as producer, he’d record local bands from Nairobi, or elsewhere like Zaire and South Africa. Through the course of that year, Robin befriended a local female vocal trio (Shikisha) and started to conceive a big idea.
Enlisting the help of long-time friend and collaborator Wally Badarou, Robin invited him over to help record song ideas that could combine the worlds of African Pop and new school synthpop. At that moment, there was no template from which to follow, so he chose to allow the “African” side of the equation guide the musical choices. Rather than attempt to westernize the situation. Robin and Wally absorbed the influences of highlife, Afro-Funk, Jùjú, and soukous found in the Pop radio of Kenya and tried to bend the English word and life to it. A single was conceived, released under the name of Robin Scott with The African Pioneers.
“Crazy Zulu”, much like Malcolm McLaren’s “Soweto”, were released at the height of the Thatcher Years and were as infinitely misunderstood, and kept below the radar, so as to not make much headway outside English shores. (One can go even further with that comparison as Robin’s own hip-hop/electro experiment “Eureka-ka-ka!” failed to make as much headway as Malcolm’s “Duck Rock”). However, at least Malcolm got his Duck Rock full-length LP.
For Robin, “Crazy Zulu” would not launch Jive Shikisha! the album, into record stores. Upon hearing the finished project, Virgin Records couldn’t fathom how to actually promote much less categorize this record. Shelving it into the archives, Robin’s record remained unheard for decades. With no star power left to speak of Robin felt proud of what was there but was unable to get it in print. Sadly, this was as Wally Badarou would say “ a shame [that] the project was perceived just as yet another ‘coup’ a la Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, or classmate Malcolm McLaren.” There was more to it than that.
Instantly you hear it in the opening track “Crazy Zulu”. A tongue-in-cheek ode to highlife, Robin does a sweet take on the reigning African Pop musical style. Here you can clearly hear the gorgeous call and response harmonies Shikisha would add to the whole album. “Are You Ready” brilliantly highlights the influence of western Country music on African Pop music and adds to it by injecting it with even more levity that makes this slide guitar workout become something even more joyful than the sum of its parts.
I’m going to jump around a bit and take you directly to “Jolie Afrika”. Wally’s favorite, it shows Robin stepping back and letting others drive the song forward, turning it into one utterly sublime and tender soukous that literally throws you onto the dancefloor. “Massai Mara” shows discreetly the influence of David Fanshawe and Father Père Guido Haazen, early world fusion pioneers who walked through this more learned path before. The words of “War Dance” make even more sense, as I re-listen to them now: “I’ll bag me a love, if it takes me a lifetime.”
Although, it seems like it’s taken a lifetime to hear these wonderful songs, in their totality, one listen to songs like “Jive Shikisha” and my vote for best groove line starter ever — heavy Congolese rumba of sorts: “Talking Drums”, here they are, in their most perfect creation. Truly the album cover told half the story. We’re talking about a voice from the African nation with beating hearts meeting eye to eye.