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Artist
Palm Wine Boys
8+ albums
about
Palm wine music is a West African style of guitar music, mainly from the countries of Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. It dates back to the days when Portuguese sailors introduced guitars to West Africa. Early African guitarists played at gatherings where revelers drank palm wine, the naturally fermented sap juice of the oil palm. Their influence can be heard in both highlife and soukous guitar players. In its pure form, palm wine music is mostly acoustic played on a couple of guitars and accompanied by percussion. The late S.E. Rogie, the "Golden Voice of Sierra Leone", is the godfather of modern palm wine music. In the 1950s and 60s, he introduced electric guitars to the traditional acoustic guitar/percussion palm wine configuration. This subtle mix of acoustic and electric guitar reinvigorated palm wine music and it experienced a resurgence in popularity that took palm wine music beyond the shores of its native West Africa. In the 1980s, Rogie lived in Oakland, CA. It was there that Richard Linley, founder of the Palm Wine Boys, learned the style from the master himself. "It completely changed my life", Linley says of his experience playing with Rogie. "I was just really, really searching for a way to express the music I loved; the African music and the folk music together. I’d never heard them played and mixed before even though that’s essentially what I was searching for. What I had heard of, of African music, was the highlife, soukous, township jive, all dance type of m
