"Penetrating the Void": An Alarming Wormhole Into the Troposphere of the Musical Psyche, the Fruit of Witch Is Goral #4
‘Penetrating the Void’: An Alarming Wormhole Into the Troposphere of the Musical Psyche, the Fruit of Witch Is Goral is a submitted music review column. This is the fourth in a series.
S.E. Rogie: Palm Wine Guitar Music: The 60s Sound
Let me say thank you to my good friend Julian, an avid audiophile, obscure music purist, and up-and-coming ethnomusicologist & employee at Smithsonian Folkways for turning me onto S.E. Rogie. Sooliman Rodgers, or S.E. Rogie, was a palm wine guitarist from Sierra Leone.
What does that mean?
Well, it’s complicated, but let’s just say that the palm wine guitarists drank the alcoholic sap of palm trees, got their instruments from Portuguese sailors, and then played beautifully melodic songs with them. The songs have a certain western influence—think surf rock and Elvis. Many of the tracks evoke the feel of Paul Simon’s Graceland, though it predates that album by a few decades.
Key tracks include “My Lovely Elizabeth,” “She Caught Me Red Hot,” and “Do Me Justice,” a track that begins with Rogie putting on a female voice. He says:
“Oh darling! It’s gone past midnight, and won’t you do me justice now?”
Then comes the wonderfully melodic electric guitar, accompanied by maracas and hand claps, while he sings:
“Now that I am feeling fine
please poor me a glass of beer
leave me a single cigarette
and then tell me sweet stories
tell me that you love me
come on do me justice, yeah.”
Rogie is so humorous and laid-back that you’ll want to enjoy his music in at least one of the following ways:
- Driving a vintage convertible German automobile down a coastline, preferably the Pacific
- Playing low-stakes card games and smoking tons of cigarettes
- Watching children play soccer from a beach side hammock
But then again, if you aren’t completely bourgeois, you can just throw it on your iPod.
No, wait, you can, you know, burn it from your friend, and listen to it on your Discman, which is cool too. It’s also great music to listen to while you:
- shave your face
- eat pineapples
- swoon about how awesome your life is.
-Gregory Campanile
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