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Thursday, September 1, 2011

VA - Nigeria 70 - Sweet Times: Afro-Funk, Highlife and Ju Ju From 1970s Lagos (Strut 2011)

An Uncle Roddus Album Review



79 Minutes of pure awesomeness from the consistently fabulous Strut Records with this third volume of the Nigeria 70 series, which kicked off with the first volume 1(reviewed Here) back in 2001 and was one of the first Afro-Funk Comps in the latest re-discovery of this brilliant music.
All three volumes of this set have recently arrived in my post box for my listening pleasure and the music on this volume is still up there in quality even after all the other comps of this type of music from Strut, Soundways and Analogue Africa, just to mention a few that i have been enjoying. The shear wonderfulness of the tracks on offer here is still outstanding. I don't need to talk about what this music sounds like as the title goes a long way towards that end but of course this disc is crammed full of all the usual great African rythems, jazzy melodic brass playing and some wonderful vocal melody's,sounding all the more exotic for being sung in Native African langauges. The first few tracks are excellent examples of Highlife and Ju Ju but not so much Afro-Funk. Tracks four and five are mind blowers with their sublime grooves and vocals and things settle down again for the Overly long "...JU JU Music" of track 6, before going stratospheric with the awesomely funky "Unity in Africa", which could be one of the coolest tracks of the whole series. The first half of this compilation is more in the Highlife and Juju vein and gets more Afro-funky in the later stages.
Plenty of sleeve notes and bits if info about the artists helps makes this another well executed Strut release and the re-mastering is also excellent.Rating 5/5

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