The bullion-clad masterpiece of these pioneers of Nigerian Funk and Afrobeat at their deepest and heaviest — tearing, wailing, mid-70s funk, heady with spirituality. Superbad from start to finish, no let-up.

The two late-50s albums. The idea was to interweave African percussion, Latin American voicings, and the reeds and horns of US jazz. With Ray Barretto, Cecil Payne, Oscar Pettiford and co.

Bele is an African folk drumming and singing tradition running back to slavery days. Mondesir leads five singers, with two percussionists, on tambour and tibwa.

Marvellous Boy is the West African counterpart of the 1950s Soho scene of our series London Is The Place For Me. Calypso, highlife and jazz, brimming over with lust for life, topicality, and extravagant creativity.

A stupendous blend of scintillating highlife, smoking Fela and spaced-out, funkdafied Black Jazz, from 1975 — Mari Affiong Usuah from Oron town, by way of Calabar in southeastern Nigeria, fronting a knockout band led by Daniel ‘Satch’ Asuquo from the Atomic 8 (and formerly of Bobby Benson’s orchestra).
The Afrofunk cuts are especially killer — with James Brown just percolating through by the end — but it’s a stunning, magnificent album, through and through.
Beautifully sleeved, too, with excellent notes by Uchenna from Comb & Razor. ‘Gob, smacked,’ he recalls, of his first listen; ‘mind, blown’.

Expertly natural recordings of an intimate concert in 1980.

Tearaway soca from the studio of Darryl Braxton, mixing it up with ragga and rave vibes.

The Latin Jazz classic from 1969, huge on the Dingwalls scene back in the day for the sizzling dancer Tema De Alma Latina.

The ravanne is a large drum — a goatskin stretched over a wooden frame — played with the hands, emblematic of the Creole cultural heritage on this island in the Indian Ocean: the music here is fabulous.

A landmark field recording, exquisitely done, ambient and intimate, with beautiful music, and documentation by Colin Turnbull. A hit with Peter Brook, anyway.

It says ‘Volume 1’ on the cover, and this debut is full of promise, but it’s a one-off, from Nigeria, 1973: African styles grooving together with Latin and Caribbean, US soul and funk, and psych rock.

Chocolate Mena leading three lineups — featuring Joe Henderson, Jerome Richardson, Alfredo Armenteros, and co — through Lalo Schifrin and Duke Pearson arrangements of core Latin and Jazz classics.

Menwar is a political and cultural spokesperson for the Creole minority in Mauritius, refreshing traditional musical forms like sega to put his messages across. The sound is lightly rootsy, dominated by drums and voices.