circle alcove

“Tafa on Congas was actually Mustapha Onigbanjo, A Nigerian Yoruba who came over to Manchester in the late 50's. I studied African drumming in a school in Moss side with him twice a week at his evening classes for a couple of years in the mid/late 80s. He taught Hi Life, JuJu, and kpanlogo rhythms and was very much a traditional african style teacher. He also taught the children at the school there, he said they were great at drumming. The school (or perhaps the all saints adult ed. centre on Oxford road) had funded the purchase of a lot of congas and Kpanlogo drums. It was a really great resource to have him teaching there. Sometimes he would bring his evening class pupils down to the gigs at the band at the wall and do a bit of a presentation of the rhythms before oduduwa came on, or we would play along with oduduwa. Sometimes we would play drumming for an African dance Class to perform to.
Mustapha said he was a sax player in Nigeria but when he came to England his drumming was what was unique about him,whereas in Africa his drumming was just ok, as there were so many brilliant drummers. He said he got some work doing film music and so forth in the 60's for fast car chase clips , and he would play mad fast drums to it.
In the early classes he would teach some of the sacred rhythms of Africa but as time went on he stopped teaching them. He said he always explained to his pupils that those rhythms were a spiritual heritage, and were used to heal people, and to call for help from spirits. He said they should only be played in special places,at a shrine, in the woods, or in private place for prayer and so forth. One day he found some drummers busking with those rhythms and he was very saddened by it. Many of the people I knew at his class, myself included , were very interested in learning about the that spiritual side of music, as we felt that it was an important aspect that was now lacking in contemporary consumer use of music. Sometimes we, his students, would compare snippets of those sacred rhythms and try and understand them. They were often complex, 12/8 timings, very different to our understanding of music.. We all felt sad that he had been so let down, and decided never to use those rhythms in such a way. .

The folk in those days who turned up to Mustapha's Class were pretty serious freaks, I remember one guy used to always come bare foot, even in the snow, and he carried a massive conga on his head. Many of us had died hair or dread locks and so forth and wierd/ ripped clothes and Mustapha took it in his stride and used to just smile and laugh. He said he could never figure out the Brits as they could be so snobby and stuck up but at the same time they loved rhythm and could be really wild.

I left Manchester in the late 80's. I had asked for his pemission to pass on his teachings before I left as I was doing some classes for children and so forth, and he was very pleased I was taking his teachings with me. I still teach african drumming to this day and would have had no starting place without his kind, playful teaching and his wisdom. I dont know what happened to him,
I hope he is alive and well but I think he would be getting on by now if he's still with us.. I owe him a lot and would be greatful if anyone could post up what became of him. I remember he was friends with the conga player from Harlem spirit and the two of them would sometimes play with the drummers at the advanced class, playing wonderful stuff way out of our reach. Mustapha could get a better sound out an old table top than any drummer I knew could get out a top conga. On a drum he had a sound like an axe through wood. Ashe Ashe to you Mustapha Onigbango, wherever you are.”

“the drummer was actually called John Wilshaw and he was in Divorce Buro before that, who were a sort of acid punk group from Heald Green and Wilmslow.
Tarzanz milkmen changed thier name to the milkmen after a while. They also had a casstte e.p i think as well, called ' my lousy london ones' or something like that.”

“steve toon was one of the main djs with KFM a stockport based pirate that came on air first in 83.
He focused on local bands and the wierd wonderful and obscure, fulfilling a john peel sort of function for Kfm. KFM were busted I think in 85 and then got a licence in 87 or so and Toon was back on the air for a only a short while before there was a bust up of some sort btween him and the management. not heard of him since. a good bloke.”

“i was at a gig at stockport college, early 1980 a sort of blues punk night. First on were the transparent blues band, who were a sort of zappa meets the tubes meets motorhead thing, then the Zans then the Cheaters. the zans seemed to take their cothes off a lot.I think they did that night ( or it might have been another gig) but whenever it was I was was quite impressed with thier nerve as there were some very dodgy hard men there at the front but the Zans didnt see to care.”

“the thing that struck me most about the Worst was the drummer was actually playing a children's chad vally drum kit. It was tiny (made for little children) and the guy was bashing it very VERY hard but it just sounded like a childrens toy. This was at a gig at the squat in early 77 or very late 76.the other two were mangling thier guitars and seemed to know a few notes a least,although perhaps not. but they did do some loud shouting. I remember seeing this guy at the front watching . he was wearing a badge saying 'the fall' and i thought maybe he was paul morley with a haircut (paul used to have very VERY long hair) the paul morley type with short hair seemed to like them, or at least he was concentrating very hard on them. but the rest of the people there were sort of cowering in the farthest corner away from them in the very decrepit venue. the band were, I think, the worst.
c.a.”

“I saw them a couple of times. like a sort of hard bluesey
motorhead zztop thing. Gyp nicholsan, a serious Who freak, was one of the guitarists.
c.a.”

“in those days inner sense were the only percussson group around,I saw them busking many times in manchester and stockport and they had a fantastic dancer who would dance on his hands in the street. i remember proudly playing congas in a session with a few of them at an opening of a tai chi centre in west didsbury around 1988. They were hugely influential in the embryonic community percussion scene. Some of them said they picked up some african stuff as well from Mustapha Onigbanjo, who was a nigerian drum teacher based in moss side who I was studying with.
cheers and well done to them from Circle Alcove”