“African Night Flight” (1979)

My original 2016 post about this song (click to link) uses an excellent video of the band Shearwater performing it from a series of videos of the band covering the entire Lodger album. So this is the first appearance of the song as performed by Bowie on this blog. I’m posting it not to discuss the song itself but to commemorate my wife’s adventure to Africa, which starts today. She’s off to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro And then go on a safari. Bowie mentions Africa in a few songs, but since my wife is actually taking an African night flight, I couldn’t think of a better song to mark the occasion.

I will mention a few things about the song itself— first, most of the lyrics are impossible to decipher without a lyric sheet but it is actually about Africa, and more specifically flying around Africa. Also, there’s a chanty-refrain that’s especially difficult to understand because it’s in Swahili. The lines, “ Asanti habari habari habari; Asanti nabana nabana nabana” mean, “thank you for the information, thank you, thank you.” And for that I thank Google translate.

I’m excited for my wife and will miss her while she’s gone.