Album Review: Aki Special

"If you forget your mother, you have lost your life," croons Nigeria highlife star Nico Mbarga in one of African music's biggest hits, the classic 10-minute midtempo dance rave "Sweet Mother." Mbarga was the most successful translator of West African horn-driven rumba to a guitar band. Mbarga's Rocafil Jazz group may lack bop syncopation, but its six members nonetheless swing together with sweet, machinelike precision. Released originally in the late seventies, before juju and fuji became Nigeria's predominant styles, the tracks collected on Aki Special collectively mark one of the most fertile periods of African music--with tribal rhythms and proverb-studded vocals combined with Western pop harmonies to create ecstatic dance music for both the body and, as suggested by "Free Education in Nigeria," the body politic. --Richard Gehr

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