"Helen Umebuani Nee Nkume was born in 1943 at Nbiabike Amekpu Ohafia. Though herfather was a prominent member of the community, her family moved to the bigger city of Umuahia, capital city of AbiaState, while she was still young. She received her educationthere and while in secondary school she met her future husband, Umebuani Onwuzulike.Their marriage was blessed with three wonderful children.

Helen started her musical career in the early 70s,forming a group known as the YoungTimers.They recorded their first couple of Highlife albums for Tabansi, both of whichbecame hits in the east side of the country. By the late 70s she self-produced andreleased her two best albums: "Young Timers Band" and "Vol.IV", which were pressed invery limited editions and distributed mainly in the area where the group was active,Umuahia and its surroundings.

The music on those albums have a certain progression to them. The "Young Timers Band"LP is mostly still steeped in the highlife mood that distinguishes her earlier work but onetrack, "Umo Imo Special", stands out from the rest. It's a fusion between highlife, jazz andafrobeat and totally dance-floor friendly-what we would call “Countryside Afrobeat”.

"Vol.IV" has a more defined Afro Funk sound but the tracks "Music" and "Onye Ije" areclearly among the most loved of that Countryside Afrobeat genere. (We'd like to note herethat on this last track we decided to maintain its original sound as much as possible. Infact, the production is somehow quite lo-fi, with the music relatively low and in backcompared to the up front vocals, a style that we believe was intended by the group.)

By the early 90's Helen had become born again and started performing on gospel Albums,eventually becoming one of the most successful Nigerian gospel musicians of the 90's.Helen Nkume albums are some of the most elusive produced in Nigeria during the 70s andfinding her family has been as complicated as finding clean copies of heralbums!

We remember the first time we found her orange album. We didn't know what itcontained but something about the cover shouted “pick me up”! We were in a village nearUmahia, had no light nor way to listen to it on our turntable but when a cover speaks toyou that way-you have to trust it. Once we got back to our room we played it and werehappily surprised: the Lp is a bomb!!!

Our minds started mulling over the idea of making something special and we started totalk with all our friends, musicians and artists in the area in order to find some info abouther. For 2 ears though–nothing, apart from discovering that she had passed away inearly 2000. Luckily our good friend Austin from The Combats was able to locate herdaughter and son in Umuhaia and we were finally able to license the music from them.Sadly, not much material was left, only one very, very damaged picture.

We hope you enjoy the result of this project. We did, even though it took us years to find,create and put all its pieces together, and we are delighted to finally be able to launch itand make it available for all the music lovers."

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WAS - Word and Sound Medien GmbH
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DE - 22113 Hamburg
Germany
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