Strut (label)
08 March 2010 (released)
13 March 2010
As I have seen before, there was a huge amount of good music trapped within the African Continent in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and the material that is now being trawled and released is a clear indication of what we missed while we were ‘enjoying’ the likes of Middle of The Road or Buck’s Fizz.
This collection from Strut is all Afro-Beat, from the East of Africa and it was originally released in 2001 but it has been out of print since 2002.
Ignoring the history and importance of the album you have got to treat it on its musical merits and it scores on just about every level.
You swing from Jingo doing ‘Fever’ a superb bass heavy, jazzy and horn-laden romp into ‘Heavy Heavy Heavy’ by Geraldo Pino & The Heartbeats with its wah-wah guitar and pounding rhythms - six and a half minutes of pure funk and addictive as crack.
The album has funk, psychedelica, chants and dance music all wrapped up with a huge sense of fun and track after track of irresistible beats.
‘’Yuda’ is a magnificent African number by Dackin Dackino with very little Western influence and at the end of its nearly 13 minutes you find yourself on the other side of the room, knackered and not knowing how comes you danced around like a loon for the whole time.
The shortest track on the album is also one of its best – ‘Sweeper Soul’ from Super Mambo 69 is a furious bit of soul/pop with a lovely guitar sound and massive beats.
‘Mabala’ from The Yahoos has a lot of the sound tricks enjoyed by the Lee Perry’s or Joe Meeks of this world and if it had been released in the UK in the sixties I guess that it would have been top ten and one of those numbers played every time someone wants to illustrate ‘wacky’ – it is also danceable as all hell.
With the new album and best of from Osibisa and some great releases from the likes of Analog Africa it seems as though this is the perfect time to re-issue this collection – the original and might be the best.
