50th Anniversary Reissue; ‘Igbo smoke vinyl’.

Scorcher! An all-time funk favourite of Afrika Bambaataa.
Anniversary edition, with extras.

Aka J.J.D. (Johnny Just Drop).
‘Recorded in autumn 1976, six months before the army attack on Kalakuta Republic, this is a lampoon of ‘been-to’ Nigerians, who had been to Europe or the US and returned with an inferiority complex about African culture. Ghariokwu Lemi’s front-cover portrays a suited-up been-to, dressed like a cartoon British toff, as he parachutes into a Lagos street to the bemusement of passers-by. The back cover shows a more funkily dressed been-to, wearing US-style ghetto-chic, but looking equally out of place. See how these JJD’s dress and talk, sings Fela, they are trying to be foreigners. In response, the chorus repeats the single word ‘original’, invoking Fela’s closing line on Gentleman: ‘I no be gentleman at all-o, I be Africa man, original.’‘

‘Fela used the cover of Ikoyi Blindness to announce his change of middle name from Ransome, which he now considered a slave name, to Anikulapo, which means ‘he who carries death in his pouch.’ The front cover shows Ransome crossed out and Anikulapo added above it.
‘The cover also announced the Africanisation of Africa 70’s name, changing it to Afrika 70. In the title track, Fela draws attention to the economic chasm separating the haves and have-nots of Nigerian society, contrasting the get-rich-at-all-costs, self-obsessed residents of the prosperous Lagos suburb Ikoyi with the more community-minded, poor inhabitants of the Mushin, Maroko, Ajegunle and Somolu neighbourhoods.
‘On the flip, Slap Me Make I Get Money) rails against the upsurge in police and military personnel assaults on people in the streets of mid-seventies Lagos. Motorists were commonly pulled out of their vehicles and given a whipping for minor traffic offences; police and soldiers were getting away with flagrant corruption in broad daylight.’

The song Original Suffer Head — an angry homage to working-class Nigerians — presented in its full-length, 25 minutes, 24 seconds glory, restoring four minutes of ‘lost’ material, including a superb keyboard solo by Fela, which appeared on the original pressing, but has been omitted from subsequent reissues. The version used here starts and finishes with this characteristically visceral, futuristic keyboard work.
This was the first album Fela released under the name Egypt 80 (after disbanding Afrika 70 in 1979).

‘The penultimate album of newly recorded studio material released by Fela before his death in 1997.
‘Like its immediate predecessor, Beasts Of No Nation (also 1989), and its follow up, Underground System (1992), the album finds Fela continuing to campaign for human rights and social change despite the relentless beatings, jailings and general harassment he had received from successive military regimes since the start of the 1970s.’

Look out for Wayne McGhie, Jackie Mittoo and Johnny Osbourne passing through from Studio One. Also Alton Ellis’ son, Noel, and numerous local one-aways. Lovingly researched.

The finest of his dancehall interventions with the Roots Radics, as the eighties progressed. This is taut and simple, tough and atmospheric, triumphant.

Heavyweight, apocalyptic Bunny, with a burial b-line, burning horns, masterful dub. By a mile the best thing on Blackheart Man.

Ex-Honest Jon’s employee Nick Gold celebrates 20 years of his World Circuit label with this double. Includes previously unissued tracks plus smashers from Buena Vista, Ali Farka Toure et al.

Music from the Amha label run by Amha Ashete, driving force of modern Ethiopian music.

The azmaris were originally wandering minstrels, roaming the Abyssinian countryside. These varied snapshots of the musical life of Addis Ababa in the 1990s are offered as a kind of homage to them.

Sublimely tilted like Sun Ra, rocking like James Brown at the Apollo, the tracks here by police bands are a reminder that Ethiopia at the time had no independent modern groups.

Presenting the musical giant, keyboardist Mulatu Astake — that’s him on the sleeve with Duke Ellington.

The music of Tigray and Eritrea — where the majorities speak the Tigrigna language — is rhythmically and melodically different from Ethiopian music.