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Dumama, “Towards an Expanse” (Soundway, 2026)

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This is the solo debut from Berlin-based poet/composer Gugulethu Duma, but she previously released an acclaimed collaboration (Buffering Juju) with Algerian-German producer Kerim Melik Becker on Johannesburg’s pirate radio show-turned-record label Mushroom Hour back in 2020. Notably, this album’s endlessly evolving form first began to take shape even before the release of its predecessor, as Duma composed these pieces in her native South Africa before recording them in Brooklyn with Pakistani-American producer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily back in 2019. The pieces were then fleshed out in Duma’s adopted home of Berlin before she returned to South Africa to inventively reimagine and reshape the album with the help of producer Nandi Ndlovu and Mushroom Hour’s Dion Monti. The end result of that last session (the album in its present form) is pretty fucking revelatory, as the efforts of the two producers enabled Duma strike a perfect  and unique balance of African inspirations like Miriam Makeba, “the psychoacoustics of South Africa’s lore,” and more cutting edge electro-pop influences like FKA Twigs and Sudan Archives.

Fittingly, the piece that best captures Dumama and her collaborators at the height of their powers is the album’s lead single “No Abiding City,” which is a re-envisioning of a hymn from her childhood that she sang with her family “during moments of grief and transition.” The transformation seems like it must have been quite a radical one, however, as “No Abiding City” feels like a killer sensuous soul jam with plenty of trippy production flourishes and vivid sound design enhancements. That said, it is still quite a simple and minimal piece at its heart, as Dumama describes her palette as primarily just “voice, uHadi (a traditional Xhosa bow instrument), live vocal effected loops, processors, field recordings and distortions.” While the essence of the piece is little more than the rattling, percussive pulse of the uHadi, a xylophone melody, a few cool synth sounds, and Dumama’s deeply soulful vocals, the production tweaks elevate it into a sexily psychedelic banger viscerally enhanced with creaking, rattling, and cranking rhythmic elements and chopped, harmonized, and ululating vocal flourishes.

Notably, my other favorite piece (“Tumbled Out”) is a digital-only cut that did not make it onto the physical release, but I can grudgingly understand why as it is mostly a swirling freeform mindfuck of churning, squealing, and snarling strings, chopped up vocals, field recordings, collapsing structures, and psychotropic effects. Despite that, it still has a surprisingly strong vocal hook at its heart, as no amount of psychedelia can fully bury Dumama’s formidable pop instincts. The sublime opener “Layer After Layer” is another highlight, as Dumama laments the systems that have betrayed us with the seductive purr of a Nina Simone-level jazz diva over a languorous backdrop of quavering guitars, bleary synth tones, and a host of chopped and pitch-shifted vocal fragments.

Elsewhere, “Eating the Other” takes things in a far more gnarly, stomping, and visceral direction, as crashing and stumbling rock percussion, guitar noise, and spacy sprays of synth tones push Dumama’s vision into terrain that suggests that an African choir, The Melvins, Black Dice, a synth jazz ensemble, and a numbers station all accidentally booked the same rehearsal space and absolute chaos ensued. The album also features a number of other eclectic and freeform plunges into unconventional psychedelia, as “Rising Falling” combines smeary backwards piano, a bright yet ghostly chanting melody, and pitch-shifted spoken word reminiscent of Delia Derbyshire’s “Dreams,” while “What Did The Rain Say?” starts with a Colin Stetson-esque snaking saxophone motif and gradually darkens into a billowing and disorienting ASMR mindfuck.

While some tracks certainly strike a more seamless and hook-centered balance of Dumama’s eclectic and divergent influences than others, she definitely had a very cool overarching vision and it is easy to see why so many talented people were eager to help her get this long-gestating debut to the finish line, as she is quite a singular talent and Towards An Expanse is quite a singular album. As the proverb goes, “it takes a village to raise a child,” but raising this particular entity went considerably deeper than merely enlisting a host of killer collaborators, as Dumana’s outsized inspirations also pulled in threads from childhood songs,  African oral culture, deconstructionism, ancestral voices, gospel, post-punk, “electro-psychedelic space travel,” and “Black ontological understandings of circular time.” Dumama did not just write a cool batch of songs here—she attempted to distill all of the beauty, sadness, and mystery of life into an album-shaped vessel.  In short, this is proper top-tier outernational business and one of the most boldly unique albums of the year.

Listen here.

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“Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings from the 1970s & ’80s” (Soundway, 2013)

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There are certainly a number of fine labels currently trawling record bins in Jamaica, Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia in search of great lost, unheard, or forgotten music, but Soundway compilations (particularly the African ones) are almost always my favorites. The reason for that is quite simple: Miles Cleret and his collaborators are especially adept at 1.) knowing a great song when they hear it, and 2.) making damn sure that there are a number of such songs on every single collection they release. Unsurprisingly, Kenya Special continues that hot streak, being every bit as essential as their classic Ghana and Nigeria collections.

Unlike some other compilations of great regional African music, the 32 songs compiled for Kenya Special are rooted in a time of relative prosperity and stability. Kenya was far from a dull place politically in the ’60s, owing to their newfound independence from England and a war with ethnic Somalis, but Nairobi was very much a thriving city with a booming tourist industry by the time of these recordings. Tourists, of course, need to be entertained, so many talented West African musicians wound up playing Afro-beat and American soul covers in the city’s finer hotels. 

Predictably, that fateful collision of cultures eventually yielded its own thing, as intrepid musicians soon began finding ways to combine those tourist-friendly sounds with their own distinctively Kenyan styles of Benga and Rumba/Lingala (and they also found that Nairobi was an easy place to quickly record and release records). While this compilation includes a few classic examples of those two “native” styles, most of the focus is upon the less-easily categorized cross-pollination that followed.

As a non-expert in African music, I found the sheer number of intermingling styles (chakacha rhythms, taarab music, etc.), regions, languages, and bands represented on Kenya Special a bit overwhelming, but my dim understanding of what is actually happening did not prevent me from enjoying the music at all. While there is certainly lot of variety on display, the primary recurring stylistic theme that most of these songs share is a tight, killer rhythm section (as well as a refreshing tendency towards relative brevity). 

In general, combining a traditional, percussion-heavy African rhythm with a thick, funky bass line seems to be an especially winning formula (Loi Toki Tok’s “Ware Wa” being a fine example), particularly when that groove is bolstered by instrumental flourishes like great sax playing (Slim Ali & the Famous Hodi Boys) or dueling flute and organ solos (The Mombasa Vikings). Other bands shine in very different ways though, such as The Lulus Band with the clean guitar stabs and train-like snare roll of “Ngwendeire Guita.”

The most memorable pieces, however, take a bit more dramatic detours from the expected. Predictably, my favorite piece on the entire album (Orchestre Baba National’s “Sweet Sweet Mbombo”) opens with an amusingly ridiculous monologue in heavily accented English, but everything else about the song is equally spectacular. Hafusa Abasi & Slim Ali’s “Sina Raha,” on the other hand, stands out both for being one of the only songs to feature a female vocalist and for being noticeably influenced by Arabic music. The Rift Valley Boys also tread rather unique territory with their “Tiga Kurira,” which flogs an insistently moronic groove so thoroughly and so exuberantly that it actually becomes perversely infectious and likable.

As is usual for Soundway, the liner notes are very informative, thorough, and well-written, providing all of the context and biographical information that I could possibly need to delve into these artists more thoroughly on my own. Sadly, no one has a particularly lurid or improbable backstory this time around, but it was still fascinating to learn that artists worldly enough to be appropriating American funk and soul could still write songs discouraging women from drinking alcohol or marrying outside their immediate community. 

I was also surprised to learn that many songs were sung in Swahili rather than local dialects in order to avoid alienating rival tribes. In any case, the music itself (compiled by Miles Cleret, Johan Fredrik Lavik and Rickard Masip) could not be better. The worst I can say is that a lot of the good songs sound similar to one another and that there are not as many truly great songs as there have been on some of Soundway’s other comps (i.e. The World Ends), but those “flaws” are easily balanced out by a near-total lack of weak or even average material.

Listen here.

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“Panama! 3- Calypso Panameño, Guajira Jazz & Cumbia Tipica on the Isthmus 1960-75” (Soundway, 2012)

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This is allegedly the swansong for Soundway’s excellent Panama! series—an unexpected choice, given that this rich vein of material doesn’t show the slightest sign of being exhausted (perhaps the compilers just need some time away from the heat and the mosquitoes).  Though the focus has shifted away from funk this time, this third volume remains every bit as exuberant, smoldering, absurd, and fun as its predecessors.

One of the most endearing aspect about the Panama! compilations are Roberto Gyemant’s lively and amusing liner notes, which contain none of the academic recounting of facts common with similar albums.  Instead, they offer colorful mixture of enthusiasm and anecdote that allows listeners to share (in some small part, at least) the thrill of discovery.  For example, a local character named Tommy is responsible for introducing Gyemant to several of the best songs that he heard during his stay in Colón.  

Tommy’s shack is apparently an essential stop for music afficionados, as he has a deep love of vintage soul and Jamaican music, which he constantly blares from two large speakers set up outside. Amusingly, however, Tommy does not have a correspondingly deep love of vinyl, so he rips whatever he wants, digitally removes the crackle, and throws the record in the trash (a personality quirk likely to drive musicologists to tears or paroxysms).  The eerie crooning of the ukulele-based “Masters are Gone” was one such find, sending Roberto on a desperate search to track down the actual record somewhere.  Thankfully, he was successful, as it’s a great song.

Naturally, a number of the best artists featured on the earlier compilations appear again.  Lord Cobra again nearly steals the show with his dark and melancholy strain of calypso (“Colón Colón”), but there are a number of other great calypsos included as well- most notably Black Czar’s ridiculous story-song “Bamboo Dance,” in which our hapless narrator is seduced by an older woman at a dance.  Papi Brandao’s sizzling take on the standard “Bilongo” is another clear highlight, but the whole album is teeming with great moments covering a number of stylistic strains (the big band numbers from the ‘60s are particularly strong).  There are some unexpected and odd surprises thrown in too, such as Little Francisco Greaves’ distinctly un-Latin “Moving-Grooving,” which features some infectiously raucous James Brown-isms.

I deeply regretted my lack of Spanish fluency at several points during the album.  I am certain that I am missing out on a great deal of clever wordplay and saucy double-entendres strewn all over the many calypsos, though many of the artists helpfully bounce effortlessly back between English and Spanish (with some occasional other surprise languages thrown in too). Also, one of the most eccentric story songs on the album (“Combo Pa’ La Tineda”) probably loses a lot in its summarized translation.  Fortunately, passion and charisma go a long way towards transcending language barriers and there is no shortage of either on Panama! 3.  This is a great album.  I hope Roberto and his co-compilers take on another project together soon, as they have a definite genius for finding great lost music and presenting it as a raw and sensuous party.

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“Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & The Big Band Cumbia and Descarga Sound of Colombia 1962-72” (Soundway, 2011)

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The late Curro Fuentes was quite a fascinating guy. The youngest brother of the Fuentes musical dynasty that dominated Colombian music for four decades, he stayed behind on the coast and started his own studio when Discos Fuentes relocated to the city of Medellin (he found highland food to be “insipid”anyway). Combining some of Colombia’s biggest jazzmen with the most exciting young musicians culled from Cartegena’s many red-light district casinos, brothels, and strip clubs, he produced a slew of scorching, sexed-up big band records in the ’60s. Cartagena! assembles many of them, but the high level of quality here makes me think that the vault is far from empty. I sincerely hope there will be a sequel.

Cartagena! is a sequel of sorts to 2007’s Columbia!, which covered the output of Discos Fuentes (the label run by Curro’s brothers Antonio and Rafael) around roughly the same period. Despite Discos Fuentes’ huge success, Curro always chose to remain separate, starting off with with his own Discos Curros imprint before eventually teaming up with Phillips. In a way, Curro’s studio was kind of a Colombian analog to Factory Records, as it was very devoted to Cartagena’s local music scene and there was a lot of overlap between bands, as many musicians that led their own bands happily lended their talents to other ensembles. Consequently, Curro’s productions drew from a pretty unparalleled talent pool. Equally important is the fact that Fuentes had very strong opinions about what sounded good and wasn’t at all shy about sharing them, replacing percussionists and pianists himself if they couldn’t get a track just right. Also, he was one of the first cumbia producers to make heavy use of electric bass, which he liked quite loud.

The eclectic array of performers that Fuentes drew together resulted in some interesting cross-pollinations between Latin music genres, which goes a long way towards explaining why this music is so spectacular. The young musicians from Cartagena’s clubs made damn sure that the rhythms were raucous and propulsive, while their more established counterparts ensured that the arrangements were skillful and inventive. Despite the disparate backgrounds and the high level of musicianship, everyone could agree upon the very populist objective of heating up dancefloors. As such, this music was very focused on appealingly accessible elements like wild percussion, sultry grooves, and memorable hooks, which is quite different than where American jazz was headed around the same time.

Of all the artists, I was most impressed by saxophonist/bandleader Lucho Bermudez, who is the sole returnee from Colombia! (Soundway sure loves exclamation points). Bermudez’s two pieces are the most perfect synthesis of all of the great stuff happening on this album: fluid solos, driving (but not hyperactive) grooves, virtuosic percussion, infectious enthusiasm, quirkiness, character, and lots of vocal whoops and yelps (which are very important to me). He is not the sole stand-out by any means, though, as I was similarly taken with the songs by several other bands—particularly that of Lucho’s chief rival, Alex Acosta.

Primary compiler Roberto Guymant contributes some alternately informative and amusingly hyperbole-filled liner notes, the latter of which I found extremely charming (“The first time I heard this track, my brain immediately melted out my ears and dribbled down my shirt.”). Even though I don’t quite agree that Crescensio Camacho’s trumpets are apocalyptic or that Los Seven Del Swing embody what Black Sabbath would have sounded like if they’d been raised on the Colombia coast, his enthusiasm is pretty contagious. 

Also, he clearly knows what he is talking about both musically and historically, which is not easy when there are so many regional scenes and similar-sounding genres (to my non-Colombian ears) combining and mutating. To give one example, I learned that the upper classes were scandalized when jazz and cumbia were first combined in the 1940s because it made young Colombians “dance like blacks.” Fortunately, the young people had a lot more influence on where their culture was headed than the wealthy, reactionary types. Of course, as much as I love colorful anecdotes and uncomfortable cultural factoids, the most important thing of all is quality of the music and Roberto and his co-curators simply have great taste. A few pieces are certainly too frenzied or locked-groove-sounding for my taste, but they are largely outnumbered by excellent ones. This is a thoroughly fun and vibrant album.

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“The Sound of Siam: Leftfield Luk Thung, Jazz and Molam from Thailand 1964-1975” (Soundway, 2010)

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As anyone who picked up Siamese Soul or Electric Cambodia last year will probably attest, there was some absolutely amazing music being made in Southeast Asia in the ’60s and ’70s, so I was pretty thrilled when I heard Soundway was throwing their hat in the Thai pop ring. As expected, The Sound of Siam is a pretty spectacular album, expertly balancing soulful, funky greatness with exuberant, kitschy fun and unearthing some incredibly obscure artists in the process.

The Sound of Siam is the first Soundway collection to involve curator Chris Menist, who has previously done some work for Soul Jazz and compiled a very interesting sounding collection of weird Pakistani film music for Finders Keepers. Menist is an English percussionist/music journalist currently living in Bangkok, which makes him one of few people uniquely suited for this endeavor. 

Nevertheless, assembling a compilation of decades-old Thai music would be a Herculean undertaking for anyone (even without a language barrier) and one that requires complete immersion, patience, and a hell of a lot of crate-digging. At the time of many of these recordings, recording studios, records, and record players were all quite uncommon in Thailand, so releases were often self-distributed and went largely to collectors and folks like party DJs until cassettes ultimately took hold. 

Things are further complicated by the fact that most releases were only 45s and that cover art could sometimes be quite misleading regarding an album’s actual participants. Also, vintage music is not exactly revered or coveted in Thai culture. Fortunately, many of the old record shops from the period are still around and still have the same owners and the same dusty stock, so a suitably intrepid person can still find some gems with enough persistence (provided they don’t have allergies).

The biggest revelation here is Chaweewan Dumnern, who contributes three songs, all of which are excellent. My favorite is “Lam Toey Chaweewan,” in which she plays the role of a mistress telling her lover that she’ll wait for him to leave his family. Of her three pieces, that one has the sultriest groove, but her vocals are thoroughly gripping and oozing with emotion at all times. Her inclusion is quite a coup for Miles Cleret and Menist, as I have not seen her work on any other compilations and I had an extremely hard time even finding any of her Thai releases (hint: her name also can be spelled “Chawiwan Damnern”). 

Another remarkable piece is The Petch Phin Thong Band’s instrumental “Soul Lam Plearn,” which blasts into a completely raucous, utterly infectious, and triumphantly ridiculous rave-up after a deceptively noodling lute intro. I was also quite a fan of Onuma Singsiri’s sassy vocals on the melodramatic “Mae Kha Som Tam,” which uses a papaya-based salad as a metaphor for urban loneliness. However, there are quite a few other instantly likable songs here as well, those just happen to be the upper tier to my ears. There is very little weak material or filler.

Aside from the scattering of truly great songs and characteristically informative liner notes, The Sound of Siam is also pretty exceptional for its many bizarre and unintentionally comic touches. For example, the artists include both former rickshaw drivers and monks, “Ding Dong Ding” was originally on the soundtrack of an Italian “caveman sex comedy,” and Plearn Promdan contributes a song about drunken monkeys and weed-smoking elephants. 

The music itself can be equally absurd, as Dao Bandon’s “May Jom Ka Lon” kicks off with circus-style brass band music and many other songs feature incongruous ripped-off classic rock riffs (even the good ones). Fortunately, quality still reigns, so all of amusing background information, silly morality tales, and misguided musical flourishes only serve to imbue the album with an enormous amount of character and fun. This is my favorite compilation of the year.

Listen here.

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“Nigeria Special Volume 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6” (Soundway, 2010)

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This is purportedly the final album in Soundway’s excellent Nigeria Special series (a fact that causes me no small amount of pain), but at least it is concluding in fine form. While some of the previous albums may have hit higher highs, the breezy, laid-back songs collected here might be the most consistently strong and listenable batch yet (though without entirely forgoing eccentricity). This will likely be the soundtrack for my summer.

It is difficult to believe that most of the tracks compiled here have been out of print for over three decades, as this album is packed with memorable melodies and lazily infectious grooves from the very beginning. The ridiculously titled “Psychedelic Baby” kicks the album off perfectly with a languorous rhythm, sultry horns, and a pleasingly bittersweet chorus, setting a standard of excellence that does not waver until the album ends. 

Notably, “Psychedelic Baby” features one of my favorite soul music tropes: a spoken word monologue/confessional addressing a possibly fictitious woman (a move that only becomes more charming with the addition of heavily-accented, difficult-to-understand English). Sadly, none of the other 18 artists included here takes some time to break it down for the ladies, but they manage to hold my attention pretty well anyway. On a related note, I am also a huge fan of absurdly grandiose and unwieldy band names, an appetite that this album satisfies admirably (“Commander In Chief Stephen Osita Osadebe & His Nigerian Sound Makers” being my favorite, despite stiff competition).

There is no noticeably weak or even average material here, but there are a number of stellar tracks strewn throughout the album that stand out from the rest. Two of the best are by so-called “progressive” bands: Tunji Oyelana & The Benders and The Nkengas. In this case, however, that term has no relation to its oft-unfortunate Western connotations—instead, both bands are merely more ingenious and resourceful than their peers. Oyelana’s “Iwo Ko La Dami” features jazzy sax leads and a minimalist guitar vamp that are similar to many of the other acts from that era, but bolsters them with incredibly tight, funky, and virtuosic drumming. As for The Nkengas, their “Anyi Bundi Igbo” boasts a brilliantly space-riddled and compartmentalized production that sounds like it was filtered through Martin Hannett.

Curator Miles Claret seems to have deliberately opted for more uniformly relaxed and spacious feel with this album, eschewing the more aggressively funk-influenced and heavy-handed strains of ‘70s Nigerian music for a strong emphasis on Highlife. Nevertheless, he still snuck in some moments of oddball experimentalism. For example, “Totobiroko” is based on a hypnotically repeating bass pattern and a weirdly erratic xylophone motif, but manages to maintain an extremely cool tribal groove in the process.  

The album’s closer (by Joy Nwoso and Dan Satch) is stranger still, as it uses an endlessly repeating two-note bass line and languid brass hook to hold together a lurching beat and bizarrely operatic female vocals. Both tracks are certainly disorienting and outré when heard alone, but they are sequenced in such a way as to fit quite seamlessly with the less boldly ambitious surrounding material. Also, a great beat goes a long way towards making indulgent weirdness palatable.

Nigeria Special Volume 2 is an excellent place to start for anyone curious about African music. While the ‘70s birthed a lot of brilliant and vital music in countries like Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Senegal, and Lagos, that era was also characterized by rampant clutter, over-enthusiasm, structurelessness, and bloated song-lengths. Claret is much better at sifting through it all than most, resulting in an album packed with short, hook-filled songs and killer rhythms, but without sacrificing rawness or immediacy. This is, simply put, great music. I am sad to see this series end (especially so soon after the Panama! swansong), but I am sure Miles and Soundway have something else equally compelling looming on the horizon. 

(The triple LP version of this album features three extra songs not covered here)

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“Nigeria Afrobeat Special: The New Explosive Sound in 1970’s Nigeria” (Soundway, 2010)

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The late Fela Kuti was such a larger-than-life cultural supernova that it is very easy to forget that a host of other excellent Afrobeat bands spawned in his wake. Of course, the comparative obscurity cloaking the rest of that scene was also not helped by the fact that virtually none of Nigeria’s other hot bands from that period ever had their albums released outside of their native country (or even reissued once the boom had ended). On this, the fourth installment of Soundway’s Nigeria Special series, indefatigable curator Miles Claret sets out to redress that injustice (and assemble another great album in the process).

Of course, a completely Fela-free Afrobeat compilation would be both impossible and undesirable, so this album appropriately kicks off with the single version of his “Who’re You?” from 1971. While a different incarnation appears on Fela’s London Scene, this is the first ever reissue of the original 45 version. It is far from my favorite Fela track, but it is a rare and somewhat seminal one and has the added important distinction of being under nine minutes long. That relative brevity was an early casualty in Kuti’s career, as his brilliance was always tempered by a tendency towards wildly bloated, self-indulgent vamps that were often two (or even three) times as long.

Thankfully, none of the artists included embraced that trait (aside from perhaps Eric Showboy Akaeze). That said, tightly structured songs were clearly still pretty anathema to the whole Afrobeat aesthetic—all of the tracks here are essentially built upon a single complex, poly-rhythmic groove with intermittent soloing. The vocals (while spirited) are largely inconsequential to the success of the songs, as it is the groove that is king.  From this perspective, the album’s clear highlight is “Mind Your Business” by Saxon Lee and The Shadows International, who exhibit a cool restraint lacking in many of their peers. The components of the song are pretty skeletal, but the simple organ figure and minimal beat flow beautifully and insistently. Lee and his band get just about everything else right too, as the organ and brass solos are great throughout. The following track (by Bongos Ikwue and The Groovies) is also pretty spectacular, as its funky guitars and exuberant lurching drums provide an infectious bed for the song’s catchy call-and-response vocals. The percussion gets quite wild and adventurous at times too. 

Of course, no compilation is flawless and Nigeria Afrobeat Special is no exception. There are a handful of songs that are over-cluttered or a bit heavy-handed with the drums and brass arrangements, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Aside from the two standouts mentioned above (which occur early on), the album only grows stronger as it progresses (bolstered by excellent work by Segun Bucknor’s Revolution and Fela’s chief rival, Orlando Julius). 

The greatest successes on this compilation tend to be the bands that realized that there was no way to better Fela (and his inimitable drummer Tony Allen) at their own game and that their best bet was to bring something new to the table. That “something new” varies a lot here, as these bands all strove to find ingenious solutions to the same problem. Consequently, the Afrobeat formula is twisted in many interesting ways here, ranging from “more song-like” to “swaggeringly jazzy” to simply “just more laid back.” That variety certainly enhances the album’s listenability. Nigeria Afrobeat Special succeeds admirably in its objective of providing a much-needed overview of an especially vibrant and fertile stage in African music evolution, but it is (equally importantly) a strong album scattered with a handful of should-be classics.  

(Note: This album is also available as a triple-LP, featuring five bonus tracks not covered here)

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“Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81” (Soundway, 2009)

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Unearthing brilliant music from Ghana seems to be a consuming obsession with Soundway label boss Miles Claret, as he has already compiled two previous albums (Ghana Soundz) prior to this massive collection. It is easy to see why he is so fascinated, as there was clearly something very unique and eccentric happening during Ghana’s musical prime. A lot of great songs are included on Ghana Special but it stands out from other African music compilations much more for sheer anarchic exuberance and unpredictability.

Claret clearly set out to cover a wide variety of styles with this collection, but there is a very prominent focus on percussion here that transcends any genre divisions. While some songs are ostensibly Afrobeat, Highlife, or Ghanaian Blues, their differences seem quite small when compared to their similarities. With few exceptions, virtually all of the 33 songs on this double-album sound as like they originated from a great beat and then organically evolved from there. Consequently, the success or failure of a song is intimately intertwined with the strength of its backbone groove.  

None of the percussionists on Ghana Special sound like they are phoning it in, but many sound like they get a bit carried away—the best songs are often the most laidback and uncluttered (like K. Frimpong’s “Kyenkyen Bi Adi M’Awu”). That said, “great” does not always mean “danceable for Western feet.” I don’t think that there is a single track that utilizes just one drummer—many of these bands sound like they may have three or four different percussionists cohering into one dense and complicated poly-rhythmic groove. Odd time signatures, wild fills, and unusual accents abound.

Given the almost single-minded devotion to rhythm shown by many of these artists, it is no surprise that pop song structures are usually discarded in favor of an unrelenting, sinuous groove. The most adept at this seems to be Christy Azuma & Uppers International, whose “Din Ya Sugri” combines a funky off-time beat with a tight bass line and a stuttering chord progression to devastating effect. 

Vis á Vis attain a similar triumph with “Obi Agye Me Dofo,” though they twist the formula a bit with some cool psych-inspired organ work and catchy horn hooks. Both tracks feature yet another ubiquitous element on Ghana Special: lots of sizzling and inspired solos (particularly saxophone ones). Ghana seems to have had a disproportionate number of amazing musicians during its heyday and they all seemed quite willing to take chances and push themselves. Embarrassingly, the less-than-amazing musicians apparently also felt the same way, but their over-the-top exuberance is both endearing and far from dull.   

Aside from awesome infectious grooves and saxophone flame throwing, it is pretty difficult to predict exactly what each song will contain. The breadth and depth of influences that these bands have assimilated is stunning, as is the degree to which many of them have succeeded in avoiding clumsiness or overt slavishness. 

Obviously, the influence of other African bands looms large, but there are also clear nods to practically everything else that was happening musically on earth: Latin percussion and fiery trumpets, ska-influenced horn hooks, jazz shredding, psych organs, funk bass and wah-wahed guitars, blues and classic rock guitar soloing, and on and on. The unpredictability sometimes extends to other bizarre extremes as well, as there is no shortage of feral gibbering, enthusiastic animal impressions, and odd boinging noises on this album. I suspect that there must have been a thriving drug culture in Ghana in the ’70s, or at least some sort of psychotropic contamination in the water supply.  

This is a thoroughly wild and memorable compilation, though I would probably only classify a handful of songs as “essential,”  as even the songs that don’t quite hit the mark are raucous, crazy, fun, and inventive to a rarely seen degree.  With very few exceptions, these guys came to tear the roof off the place—the world wasn’t listening, so pretty much anything was acceptable. Miles Cleret has done an amazing job with this one, both as a curator and a producer—eveything sounds great. Ghana Special is one of the best things that Soundway has released to date and that is no small praise.   

(Both the CD version and the 5LP (!) boxed set come with a 44-page booklet containing rare photos and a history of Ghanaian music).

Listen here.

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“Tumbélé!: Biguine, Afro & Latin Sounds from the French Caribbean, 1963-74” (Soundway, 2009)

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There has certainly been a flood of excellent African and Latin compilations released over the last few years, but Soundway seems to have outdone themselves (and everyone else) with this one. This is some of the hottest, wildest, and most unrelentingly rhythmic music ever set to wax.

The French Caribbean of the 1960s was one of those improbably perfect and fertile musical climates that can never again be replicated: the musicians of Guadeloupe and Martinique were heavily exposed to African, Haitian, and Cuban styles, yet were operating in such sufficiently insular pockets that different regions developed their hybrid musical styles independently of one another. The result was an incredibly varied and convoluted distillation of “hot” jazz, biguine, rumba, compas, bélé, gwo-ka, calypso, and guaguanco into what eventually became known as tumbélé.

The album kicks off with frenzied biguine (“Jeunesse Vauclin”) by clarinetist Barel Coppet, who actually played with Duke Ellington and Count Basie in Paris during the 1950s. While Coppet may have the most conspicuously impressive musical past (at least to those of us outside the Caribbean) among the artist featured on the album, his talent is not unique here. Tumbélé! is teeming with urbane, virtuosic jazz musicians playing alongside propulsive rhythms informed by rural drumming styles that originated from slave plantations. Naturally, this collision of highbrow culture and large goatskin slave drums was viewed as scandalous and highly politicized at first, but it quickly caught on nonetheless (presumably because it is awesome).

It is difficult to pick favorites from such a uniformly solid collection, but the surprisingly minimal gwo-ka “Ti Fi La Ou Té Madam’” by Anzala, Dolor & Vélo is hard to top due to its relentless deep African percussion, catchy call and response vocals, and wild saxophone improvising. Other standouts include the sensuously shuffling “Jean Fouillé, Pie Fouillé,” the sizzling calypso of “Cocas-La,” and the weird surf guitar and “crazed Haitian organ” of “Jet Biguine.”

The only minor grievance I have with Tumbélé! is that there is so much similarly propulsive material that it is somewhat overwhelming to take in one sitting. There is literally no filler included, but a couple more slow and sultry tracks would have been welcome to break-up the unrelenting dance frenzy a bit.  Essentially, however, this is an absolutely great album and truly impressive feat of musicology (even though it confronts me with the unfortunate realization that people in Fort-de-France and Pointe-à-Pitre got to experience nightlife at a level that I cannot even begin to comprehend or hope to replicate).

Listen here.

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“Palenque Palenque: Champeta Criolla & Afro Roots in Colombia 1975-91” (Soundway, 2009)

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The major recurrent theme for Soundway compilations is documenting that fragile and fleeting period when two cultures collide and the resulting music still seems exciting, fresh, and revolutionary. Palenque Palenque certainly fits nicely within that aesthetic, but the absorption of African music into Colombia did not follow a predictable path all, as this is a deeply strange and somewhat baffling album (albeit quite a likable one). Rather than sounding like a Latinized Fela Kuti, some of the artists more closely resemble a young Steve Reich on amphetamines trying to construct an Afro-Latin dance album from tape loops.

Champeta was born in the early ’70s when soukous, highlife, and Afrobeat records started finding their way into Columbia around the same time that sound system culture was beginning to flourish.Notably, Colombians took to these new African sounds much more enthusiastically than any other country in their vicinity—in fact; co-compiler Lucas Silva is quite fond of proclaiming that Colombia was the first (only?) “Afrobeat nation” outside of Africa. This seeming anomaly actually has some very logical roots, as the north coast of Colombia featured quite prominently on the slave trade route and gradually became home to many displaced Africans who resisted completely assimilating themselves into Columbian culture.

Naturally, covering the hottest African music of the day quickly became quite a common practice for musicians in Cartagena and Barranquilla, but it is quite hard to fathom just how that ultimately progressed into something like Cumbia Siglo XX’s “Negala Pedale,” which begins with spastic auctioneer-like vocals before kicking into what sounds like a two-note locked groove.It’s so ridiculous that it seems far more like a provocation than an honest attempt at a song (“Oh, you like to dance, do you? Try to dance to this, you bastards!”). 

Unexpectedly, however, that “locked groove” aesthetic is strewn all over the rest of the album, encompassing everything: percussion, bass lines, guitar parts, and even vocals. Most of the tracks on Palenque Palenque are built are built upon endlessly repeating loops of frenzied funkiness coupled with similarly insistent call-and-response vocals. Often, the only fluid elements are the lead vocals and (maybe) some drum fills. In fact, some songs are repetitive to such a deranged degree (particularly Son Palenque) that they veer quite firmly into avant-garde territory, a truly odd place for dance music to wind up (especially when it originates from poor ghettos with a (possibly undeserved) reputation for violence). Also, it is both charming and mystifying to hear exuberant live musicians emulating loops.

The popularity of sound systems must have played an enormous role in shaping the improbable Champeta sound, as nearly all of the contributions seem to be based upon a very simple and true premise: all you need to get some asses on the dance floor and make them go wild is a great beat and a hook that becomes instantly familiar. A handful of overachievers go beyond the formula a bit and write some cool, fully-formed songs (Banda Los Hijos de La Ni̱a Luz, for example) or display great musicianship (like La Tromba), but most sensed that when people are having the time of their lives, they do not care what the hell is being sung or if the trombone player has sick chops. At least I hope that is the case.  Otherwise, I have no explanation for the cartoonish duck impressions in “La Negra Kulende” or the onomatopoeic gibberish of “Burumburumbum.”

On one hand, it is pretty easy to see why Champeta’s popularity was relatively brief and highly localized and why Silva and Soundway’s Miles Claret had to do quite a bit of scavenging to assemble this album, as dance music has a definite sell-by date and always falls victim to the next cool thing that comes along. Also, sometimes aggressive Latin rhythms make me feel like I am trapped in an elevator with a hyperactive child. 

On the other hand, however, it is abundantly evident why Silva has dedicated his life to preserving this music (he runs a Champeta-centric label of his own): Colombia has a thoroughly vibrant, weird, raucous, and unique musical legacy that almost no one has had a chance to hear. Palenque Palenque makes me very nostalgic for those wonderful days when wild and creatively fertile new scenes could still erupt and flourish in cultural isolation, vanish before becoming lame or commodified, then resurface to startle people like me several decades later.

Listen here.

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