Zongo Junction Elephant & Mosquito (Captain Planet Remix)

It's good to have friends. Every once in a while, I hit a wall and think I have reached capacity in my brain and daily life for discovering new music. There is simply not enough time or memory space to find something brand new. I felt like that a few weeks ago when the good homie and LA DJ Sean O (no relation to Indie Shuffle's own Sean O) hit me with this Afrobeat remix recommendation.

Zongo Junction is a young 10-piece Afrobeat outfit out of Brooklyn who have been bringing the West African funk to the states for a few years now. The melanin-deficient outfit had a tongue-in-cheek titled debut LP with 2010's Thieves!, and have since maintained visibility through shows, including a residency at the Brooklyn Bowl.

According to the group's bio:

If the Talking Heads produced a Fela Kuti record of Sun Ra's music, the product would probably sound something like Brooklyn's Zongo Junction, and in an industry where it has become commonplace to watch bands perform with laptops & backing tracks instead of live musicians, Zongo Junction takes the stage 11 strong. "The only thing Zongo Junction has to do to start a legitimate dance party is show up and plug in "“ anyone within a square block earshot of this Ford-tough funk factory would be hard pressed not to join in the hoopla" says the Bay Area's SF Station.

Zongo Junction formed in 2009, when drummer and California native, Charles Ferguson, returned from a six-month stay in Ghana, West Africa. "Growing up in the Bay Area, I was exposed to a lot of amazing music from many different cultures, a lot of which had roots in West Africa. As a kid, a few different music teachers introduced me to afrobeat, and the pioneers of the genre"”Fela Kuti, Tony Allen, OJ Ekemode, Sunny Ade and others. My love of African music brought me to Ghana in 2008 and when I returned to New York, I knew I wanted to start this band."