Reviews
Greatest Hits
This is a compilation to embrace, a beautifully varied album of relatively unknown material by veteran Cuban singer Omara Portuondo....
Reviewed in issue July/2010
The Afrosound of Colombia Volume 1
Kicking off with a funky, yelping dance track that makes you wonder whether James Brown actually spent the 60s and...
Reviewed in issue July/2010
Egypt Noir
The idea behind this album is to present the music of the Africans from the deserts that encompass most of...
Reviewed in issue July/2010
Things That Fly
If you like peppery banjo picking and close male harmonies – and you should if you're a bluegrass fan –...
Reviewed in issue July/2010
Ghana Funk from the 70s
Ghana, like Benin, might not have had a Fela Kuti or a Hugh Masekela, but it always had the funk....
Reviewed in issue June/2010
Bride of the Zar
Rango is the name of a wooden xylophone and of a tradition that stretches back to Sudanese tribal culture, to...
Reviewed in issue June/2010
Mulatu Steps Ahead
An influential star of the golden age of Ethiopian popular music, Mulatu Astatke was also the first African student at...
Reviewed in issue June/2010
The Rough Guide to Arabic Lounge
Lounge – it's a tricky old concept. ‘Mood music that evoked exotic elsewheres’ is how the liner notes define its...
Reviewed in issue June/2010
Ililta! New Ethiopian Dance Music
You could be forgiven for presuming that, such is the Éthiopiques-fuelled fascination for Ethiopian music from the 1960s and 70s,...
Reviewed in issue June/2010
Assume Crash Position
Five years after Konono No 1's astonishing debut, the feral sound of their junkyard sonics and distorted, hypnotic grooves sounds...
Reviewed in issue June/2010
