African Music
Samba Mapangala, Orchestra Virunga
Sidi Siddiki, Gaspar Lawal, Alfred Bannerman, Ben Mandelson, Salah Qasim
Charlie has been drawn to many forms of African music ever since the Sixties when he spent 6 months living in Accra, Ghana, teaching, travelling and spending many a happy hour sitting in open air nightclubs enjoying great Highlife bands in the warm night air. Charlie later returned to Ghana to study marimba and to sit in with local musicians.
Later Charlie collaborated with the Moroccan singer Sidi Siddiki, recording an album (Shouf!) for Globestyle Records, worked with the renowned Nigerian percussionist Gaspar Lawal, as well as guitarist Alfred Bannerman, musical adventurer Ben Mandelson and Salah Qasim, the Sudanese oud player.
Charlie has also been closely associated with Samba Mapangala, the highly talented and honey-voiced leader of Orchestra Virunga for nearly two decades. Charlie met Samba in Nairobi back in 1989, helped bring Virunga over to UK for successful tours in the early 1990s and produced the acclaimed Feet on Fire (Sterns Records). Charlie later acted as executive producer for Song and Dance (Virunga Records). Samba now lives in the States but the two are regularly in touch.
The link with African musicians was very helpful when it came to composing and producing the music for Erica Russell's animated short films, which were both celebrations of African culture viewed from the point of view of 20th century abstract art. Music from Africa and beyond is still a major source of inspiration and imbues Charlie's listening, writing and playing to this day, as is apparent every time The Equators take to the stage.