Quiesa barely registers on a map. A handful of streets in the Massarosa municipality, tucked into the Versilian coast between Lucca and Viareggio. Yet for ten years it has housed AfroQuiesa Orchestra, a nine-piece instrumental band whose records pull from Lagos afrobeat, Japanese video game music and 1970s Italian library and film music without slipping into musical tourism.
“Marrageisha” leads off their second album C’è Sempre Tempo Per l’Amore with something unexpected: afro-funk run through the logic of Japanese video game music. The track borrows the rhythmic urgency of 8-bit platformers, with tight patterns, melodic loops that escalate and a sense of forward motion, and grounds it in a horn section that knows its way around an afrobeat arrangement. Flute doubles the lead lines, two guitars mesh with the bass, and the drums keep everything moving at a pace that suggests levels to beat and clocks running down.
The band first set this approach down on record in 2018 with their self-titled debut AfroQuiesa Orchestra on Blue Mama Records, then spent the following years sharpening it on stages across Italy. In October they opened for Seun Kuti in Volterra, and sharing a stage with Fela’s son says something about where they sit musically.
C’è Sempre Tempo Per l’Amore came out on 28 November across digital platforms and in CD and vinyl editions. The album title says it plainly: there’s always time for love. Or in this case, time to keep playing together, making funk records about Japanese video games in the Tuscan countryside.
Listen and stream the track and album through THIS LINK