Militant jazz, fusion, funk and soul from mid-seventies Manenberg, outside Cape Town, with a set of roots in club dance traditions like ballroom (‘langarm’), Khoisan hop-step and the whirling ‘tickey draai’ (‘spin on a sixpence’) of the mine camps; others in jazz-rock and the New Thing.

Stunningly modernised Tsogho ritual music from the interior forest of Gabon.
Beaten rattles, synths, Bwiti harp, male-female dialogical singing.
Released in 1989, to the intense consternation of purists; never before available outside Gabon.
Game-changing, and as authentic as it gets; warmly recommended.

Addo-Nettey was a conga player and singer for Fela’s Africa 70 when he cut this heavy afro-funk album in 1973, with the Martin Brothers Band from Portharcort, for the Tabansi label.

Originally self-released in 1993 by Peter Mekwunye as a small-run cassette, soon after his arrival in the US from Nigeria. Moody, personal, moving, freeform afro-pop, or DIY soul, using just a Casio keyboard and a microphone, with a rawly naked message of love, struggle, spirituality and hope, ‘dedicated to all Nigerians all over the world, and to all freedom fighters around the world.’ Strange — a bit like eavesdropping on someone talking to himself — and warmly recommended.
We got these from Mississippi.

The full Analog Africa treatment at last for the star of their Legends of Benin compilation, back in 2009. A thrilling, utterly unique blend of Agbadja, Cuban fon, jerk, highlife, and other African rhythms, sung in Fon, Mina, Yoruba, French, English, and Spanish,
Warmly recommended.

No-shame housey Tsonga-disco and hands-in-the-air rave banged out on Korgs and Ataris in 1994 South Africa. It sold tons, rocking stadiums from Liberia and Sierra Leone to Namibia and Mozambique.

Legendary, occult musical reverie about the I Ching, psychedelically loaded with fuzz guitars, dirty percussion, Echoplex delay, and Ingmar Bergman, concocted by Italian artist Roberto Campadello and Brazilian guitarist Luis Carlini, leader of Rita Lee’s band Tutti Frutti. Originally released as a 10” in 1975, boxed with a game, candles and a magic mirror; now remastered from the original tapes, adding two tracks from a cassette-only release on the side. With a 24-page booklet containing rare graphics, photos, press clippings and Campadello’s artworks, besides extensive notes (including information about the celebrated Persona Bar which Campadello and Carmen Flores ran in the late 70s in São Paulo’s Bixiga neighbourhood); and the LP with the iconic cover as a poster.

A compilation inspired by the fabulous sound-system, record-collecting culture of the northern cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla, where ricocheting champeta, highlife, soukous, mbaqanga, zouk, soca, and cumbia blare through stacks of hand-painted speakers, in street-corner, neighbourhood bailes.

Lovely, hypnotic, rocking peulh music from Dilly commune, Mali, near the border with Mauritania (and the same family grouping as the celebrated singer Inna Baba Coulibaly). Duelling ngonis, calabash, flute, dashes of electric guitar; newly recorded.

Mid-nineties kwaito by Thami Mdluli (veteran of chart-toppers Taboo and CJB, and in-demand producer of the likes of Sox and Sensations).
Tasty, infectious rhythms and synth-work — if the singing is a bit Black Box — with an up-for-it, DIY energy and self-identity encouraged by the momentum of the liberation struggle in this period. “Once Mandela was released from prison and people felt more free to express themselves and move around town, kwaito was becoming the thing,” says Thami.