Frank and His Sisters: Tanzania’s greatest album of all time
When talking about the greatest pop albums of all time, most people turn to the best of the 1960s. Whether it was the kind of water they were drinking or their pure genius, everyone from The Beatles to The Beach Boys was responsible for putting out material that was among some of the most celebrated melodies that Western culture has ever known. That’s just from one side of the world, and around the same time Pet Sounds and Sgt Pepper were being made, Frank and His Sisters were making the kind of pop brilliance most would spend years trying to master.
Formed in Tanzania while rock and roll was still being born, the band was started by Frank Humplick when he began to play guitar. While many bands only echo the kind of music from their home country, Humplick was drawn to the sounds he heard from Western pop, taking inspiration from Brian Wilson’s masterpieces when putting together his first handful of pieces.
Embracing the kind of pop melodicism of the three-minute single, Frank and His Sisters is the kind of album that only comes from capturing pure innocence on a slab of vinyl. Although the album is confined to just their voices and Humplick playing fingerstyle guitar, their harmonising is absolutely breathtaking when tearing through songs like ‘Mwanangu Lala’.
While many non-native speakers may not understand the language throughout the song, it doesn’t really matter. This was the kind of music that could hook you in from the pure sound of it rather than caring about what they were singing. If it had been released on vinyl alongside the other flavours of the day, chances are that they could have gotten it in the charts for the international market.
Despite having the pop formula down to a science, the album ended up going out of print for the longest time, only being available on the 78rpm record. So even when you could get ahold of the record, you were hearing the worst possible version of it, having that distinct crackle that made things a lot more crackle-y than they needed to be.
After being picked up in 2018, the entire album was restored and remastered for a modern audience, with the modern update giving the harmonies the proper balance they deserved. For those who couldn’t get past the language barrier, the reissue also came with translations of the lyrics to better understand what every song was about.
Even though many would cite artists like The Beatles and The Beach Boys for paving the way for creating perfect pop songs, Frank and His Sisters has much more to do with the blueprint of the modern pop song. Sure, the harmonies might still be indebted to the 1960s, but it wasn’t always about the production behind the songs. It was about capturing a mood in between the notes, and with just a guitar and a voice, Humplick made the kind of tunes with the carefree attitude that power pop thrives on.
