GOLDEN MOLDIES Gossner and a friend scoop up some rare (and rather dusty) records.

It takes a lot of work to be a crate-digging DJ, the sort of vinyl enthusiast who’s willing to risk life and fingernails in the constant quest for a rare and coveted slab of wax. Endless hours trekking to garage sales, junk stores and moldy basements, sorting through musty boxes of LPs and singles—it’s not an easy vocation.

But it’s safe to say that not many collectors have the dedication of Frank Gossner, better known as Franc O: Quitting a cushy deejaying job in Berlin, he pulled up stakes and moved to a region not exactly known as a record-buying hotspot—West Africa—for three full years, in a single-minded quest for real-deal Afrofunk, Nigerian disco, Ghanaian highlife and the like. He’s now spinning those tunes at his Voodoo Funk fiesta, held every Thursday night at Santos Party House. (Some of Gossner’s mixes are available on the party’s website, voodoofunk.com, and he also has a weekly show on WFMU called Radio Freetown.)

“I didn’t really have any connections there at all,” Gossner, 41, says. “It was a real case of learning by doing. You have to get really inventive. One thing I would do is go to these little radio stations and give them some money so they would let me play some music. I would get on the mike and tell people to see me at the hotel if they had music they could sell me. I would put ads in papers and a bunch of other things, and after a while I established a network of agents that would scout around for me.”

This gumption paid off. Gossner scored an estimated 3,000 LPs and 1,500 singles during his sojourn, with still more regularly shipped to his current Park Slope abode since leaving Africa. And it’s remarkable music: Masterful, often hypnotic and always unfeasibly funky, most of these records have rarely graced European or American turntables. “This was all music that was made to be played in Africa. A few of the artists, including Fela Kuti, were popular around the world, but this is mainly very local music.”

Gossner was based in the relatively peaceful city of Conakry, Guinea, making forays to the nearby countries of Sierra Leone, Ghana and Benin. But living in a region known for civil unrest did make for a bit of adventure. “I actually felt safe,” he says. “Well, there was that time when they had an uprising in Guinea when I had to flee the country. That was a little intense. There were around 200 people killed. The German embassy wanted us to evacuate, but we had taken in these dogs and didn’t want to leave them behind, so we decided to take the car and drive to Sierra Leone—that was a very crazy drive. The entire country was under martial law, and there were these scary military checkpoints all over. But two weeks later, we were already back.”

What makes Gossner’s journey, and his current choice of music, even more unlikely is the shift in persona that it’s required: He’s the same Franc O who ran the ’90s-era Vampyros Lesbos party, where he oozed a sinister, European-voluptuous vibe as he played decadent loungecore and soft-porn soundtracks, accompanied by gorgeous sidekicks Jaiko Suzuki and Manuela. “After doing that party for so many years, and playing so much ’60s French pop and sleazy-listening stuff for so many years…it got kind of boring, actually,” he explains. “I felt like doing something new, so I started buying up a bunch of obscure soul and funk 45s with the proceeds from Vampyros Lesbos. At the time, nobody in New York wanted to hear that kind of music, so I moved to Berlin and started up the Soul Explosion party, which ended up being even more successful than Vampyros Lesbos. [That shindig is still going strong, under the tutelage of resident spinner King Dynamite.] But as I was collecting funk, I just found myself getting closer and closer to the roots. And here I am.”

Where Gossner is, precisely, is in the basement of Santos, where his new affair has been attracting a somewhat curious mix of revelers. “So far, it’s been partly the sort-of-mod crowd from Vampyros Lesbos, and partly African immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria and elsewhere,” he says. And how do those immigrants react to a German dude spinning the music of their homeland? “They love it!” he says excitedly. “Absolutely love it.”

Voodoo Funk is every Thursday at Santos Party House.