Who is DJ Frank Gossner?

DJ Frank Gossner, of Voodoo Funk, is a legend among Afrobeat DJs. He spent 2005-8 touring east Africa searching out the bands and DJs that made up the funk and disco scene of 1970s Nigeria, Ghana and Benin. He buys up the original vinyl records and, after ensuring full royalities go to the original musicians, re-issues then for the DJs of today (we’re great fans at Juju Nations). He still returns to Africa twice a year to hunt out more rare funk gems, and the DJ set he is bringing to the CAI will include material not to be heard on dancefloors outside of Africa. Based in New York, this is the only UK gig in his 2010 European tour and we are flying him over from Germany especially for the night. Earlier this year he issued the incredible Lagos Disco Inferno, a collection of steaming 1970s Nigerian disco that has a real rawness, real guts (see video below). He staged an amazing New York club night of the same name that he now brings to the CAI. He details his record hunting visits to Africa on his webpage www.voodoofunk.com
where you can also find over 30 hour long downloadable mixes of his finds. Truly the best afrobeat blog on the net, just unrivalled. But this is just a taste of what he’s about. Check below for full details.

Support on the night comes with live music from Cardiff’s Caribbean Funk leaders The Cougar who will be shaking the dancefloor at midnight. Juju Nations DJs play before the band, Frank Gossner after.

SATURDAY JUNE 26th

Doors 9pm/ £2 b4 11pm (free reg cards)/ £4 after (£3 reg cards)

CARDIFF ARTS INSTITUTE

www.voodoofunk.com
www.myspace.com/thecougaryoudance
www.myspace.com/jujunations

Check this incredible Nigerian Disco tune from his latest release: Lagos Disco Inferno

Frank Gossner in detail:

Frank Gossner’s career as a DJ began in 1994 in Berlin where he had a major success with the promo parties for the re-release of the Soundtrack to Jess Franco’s psychedelic sleaze
classic Vampyros Lesbos.

After touring all over Germany with this event, Frank left Berlin for New York in summer of 1996. Under the moniker DJ Franc O. he established the legendary and decadent club classic Vampyros Lesbos Party featuring exotic dancers in a custom built, chrome plated go go cage, French 60s Pop and obscure European soft porn soundtracks. But during the Guiliani crackdown on nightlife in the late 90s it became more and more difficult to continue a night with a notoriously raucous clientel.

In 2000, Frank moved back to Berlin where under the alias DJ Soulpusher, he started a party called Soul Explosion which soon became Europe’s biggest regular night for rare and hardhitting funk 45s.

In 2005 Frank again felt the urge to find new musical horizons so he took a plane to West
Africa where he spent a total of three years traveling countries like Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Ghana, Benin and Nigeria to build up a unique collection of rare West African Funk records. For a while, he also hosted a radio show in Freetown and held club nights at various nightspots in the Guinean capital Conakry.

At times he had to flee through countries under martial law, spent days stranded due to
broken down bush taxis, got robbed at machete-point and braved thousands of miles of
unpaved roads. All of this in the purchase of rare and unknown grooves to share with the rest of the world.

His record digging road trip adventures are chronicled on his critically acclaimed blog
www.voodoofunk.com, together with more than 30 one-hour-long mp3 mixes and countless photographs and record cover scans.

Frank Gossner still returns to Africa once or twice every year and has established a network of Ghanaian and Nigerian agents who regularly ship him hundreds and thousands of records from the Black Continent straight to the Voodoo Funk headquarters in NYC.

In 2009, Frank Gossner re-released the legendary solo album by Pax Nicholas of Fela and
the Afrika 70 fame on Daptone Records. The original release from 1973 had never seen any distribution, not even in Nigeria and Frank was the owner of the only documented copy of this LP.

In March of 2010 Frank put out the Lagos Disco Inferno double LP/CD on Academy LPs
which sold in its entire first edition of 2.000 LPs and 1.500 CDs within the first 5 days of its
release. Frank is currently working on a retrospective on Ghanaian cult band The Psychedelic Aliens and various other re-issues of rare to unknown West African Funk and Afrobeat records. Frank Gossner’s DJ sets burst with exclusive tracks that are so rare that they can’t be heard anywhere else on this planet while his over 15 year experience in selecting tracks for a dancing crowd keeps him from sacrificing accessibility for the mere sense of obscurity.

Expect to hear deep but always funky and infectious Afro Funk, Mandingue, Highlife and
Afrobeat and some sizzling Nigerian Disco.

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