Brilliant, jacking, extended, improvisatory, ancient dance music played at the initiation of diviners (drugged with jolonthi, to ward off spells) on a twelve-blade xylophone with calabash resonators.

A compilation of the deepest and most affecting songs by The Philosophers National from Nigeria, beginning in the 1970s. Lilting, multi-layered, pulsing music, with muted trumpet solos, mesmerising guitar runs, driving percussion, and concise and clear-eyed lyrics sung so beautifully by Celestine Ukwu.
‘Celestine ditched the jaunty dance rhythms and relatively facile lyrics typical of the reigning highlife tunes, and ignoring the soul music tropes most of the highlife bandleaders were appropriating in an effort to inject new life to their ailing format. Instead Celestine concocted a new highlife style that was more contemplative and lumbering; with the layering of Afro-Cuban ostinato basslines and repetitive rhythm patterns that interlocked to create an effect that was hypnotic, virtually transcendental. Meanwhile, Celestine himself sang as he stood coolly onstage in a black turtleneck and a sportscoat, looking like a university professor. The message was clear: this was not necessarily music for dancing—even though the rhythms were compelling enough. This was music for the thinkers’ (Uchenna Ikonne).

Classy, spaced funk, originally issued in 1981 by Phonodisk, the most ambitious Nigerian label at that time. The Mighty Flames band expertly blends an Afro-cocktail of Roy Ayers, Kool And The Gang, Chic…

A Lagos fuji session sets Diplo tearing up walls and stomping across the ceiling; a fragment of afro-folk percussion triggers the Generals’ brilliant futurism; and two sumptuous cuts of the original deal.

Shot between 2007 and 2012, Hisham Mayet’s film is an exhilarating, hallucinatory, harrowing record of music, ritual, life, and landscape along the Niger River, as it winds through Mali and the Republic of Niger.

Initially the Moonrakers, formed in Kanu in 1968, by Steve Black, Rocky Mustapha, Tony Nosika and Frank Martins. This is their swansong, a decade later: irie Afro-disco.

‘Returning from Paris home to Côte d‘Ivoire in 1974, Ernesto began looking for like-minded musicians to form the mighty Ziglibithiens. Diabo Steck (drums), Bamba Yang (keyboards & guitar), Léon Sina (guitar) and Assalé Best (saxophone) would become the core of the group and together with Ernesto they began thinking of ways of combining the rhythms and chants of the Bété people together with makossa, funk and disco. He called his experiment Ziglibithy and his first two albums — recorded at the EMI studios in 1977 in Lagos and released on the Badmos label — took West Africa by storm, turning Ernesto Djédjé into an icon overnight, and one of the all-time legends of African music.
‘The song Zighlibitiens, brought to Colombia by an aeronautical mechanic in the early 1980, would become a huge hit on the Caribbean Coast. Renamed El Tigre by locals soundsystem operators, it attained holy-grail status in Barranquilla and Cartagena. Setting fire to innumerable local parties, it has become one of the most sought-after albums in that part of the world. And so while Ziglibithy has mostly disappeared from the airwaves of its country of birth, on the other side of the Atlantic, its fire continues to shine bright.’

Boogie-down cosmic funk — like full-throttle Roy Ayers. Jimi Adams packs his inner Hendrix off to Funky Town; the horns are the horniest; Mona runs it all down with an irresistible West African tilt.

Afro-space-disco murder — shuffling and wiggling, synthy and bubbling — from this re-incarnation of Willy Nfor’s Mighty Flames, recruited mostly from the wave of Cameroonian musicians drawn to Nigeria in the late-1970s by its heavy new funk sound. It’s a long way from Ohio, but the Troutmans are in the mix.

Virtuoso performances recorded in 1972 and al fresco in 1970, mixing together works from the nineteenth century heartlands of the instrument, and rocking Mande tunes of the 1960s and 70s.

‘The groundbreaking debut album by legendary Nigerian percussionist Gasper Lawal, originally released in 1980 on his own label CAP.
‘Lawal meticulously self-produced, composed, and overdubbed the album over four years, assembling an elite group of musicians from both Nigeria and the UK. Several of he instruments used were hand-built, including a powerful one-of-a-kind drum carved deep in the Nigerian bush. “This music is not about trends, about what is commercial or a “sound” of a particular moment,” explains Lawal, “it is about music to be felt, that gives pleasure. It is nurturing and meditative.”
‘Spiritually resonant, rhythmically rich and genre-defying,’

Ka-boom! The legendary digger re-ignites the Lagos Disco Inferno and kicks off his very own mouth-watering imprint with two sides of boogie-down bliss.

The Nigerian percussionist together with US soul singer OC Tolbert, in 1982.
A grippingly odd couple of sides: Happiness is slow-burning gospel; Nwanne is terrific, stampeding Afro-disco, with popping bass, echoing shout-outs and drums on fire.