It's kind of interesting to compare this release with last Saturday's "world music" album. I got Nigeria 70 16½ years later (£16.36 from cow.co.uk), and six years on from that it's also unavailable and apparently heading into obscurity.
The documentary information that comes with some of these releases has burgeoned considerably in the last decade or two. No longer just some short sleevenotes; you get three essays plus notes on each individual track and artists, several thousand words altogether — in very fine print, that makes my eyes hurt. Plus a whole CD, to complement the two music CDs, with a 65-minute audio documentary. I've marvelled before at the depth of the research that goes into making these compilations in fields of minority interest. It's sad to say that the company that produced this one has gone out of business (reported to have gone into voluntary liquidation less than two years after they put out this boxed set).
And it's sad, too, that as someone who has a casual but not fanatic interest in this field, I was overwhelmed by this quantity of material when I bought the package. Today was the first time I got round to listening to the documentary. It weaves together some interesting interviews with/about Ginger Baker and Fela Kuti among others.
Equally, I don't know the music very well. But the more I listen to it, the more I like it. I want to hear more of people like Joni Haastrup, and Shina Williams, were it not for the fact that the latter seems to have recorded very little other than the track included on this compilation.
Great cover photo, no?
 MusicBrainz entry for disc 1disc 2 disc 3 |
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