Explorers Series: Brian Shimkovitz’ Awesome Tapes From Africa

January 05, 2011


Basically, Brian Shimkovitz loves African music so he loves cassettes. For a long time, the cassette tape has been the popular musical format of African musicians, and on multiple trips around Africa, Shimkovitz amounted a large collection of tapes with a lot of music so good and unheard that it seemed unreal. To rectify that, he began Awesome Tapes From Africa, the simply, aptly named blog where he posts music from his tapes as free MP3s. As the site grew, Shimkovitz' audience began to send him tapes of their own, ones that were already beloved and held-tight or new ones picked up specifically to be shared. We spoke with him about the collision of lo-fi tape culture and the hi-fi internet and how technology, in whatever format, is just another helper on the way to delivering jams to the people.

Explorers Series: Brian Shimkovitz’ Awesome Tapes From Africa