Compilation

Rock, funk, trippy keyboards, tight horn sections and dense percussion are all ingredients in once and future Afrobeat, but they also apply to all the music on Nigeria Speical: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds and Nigerian Blues 1970-76. Nigeria was emerging from both a civil war and the sway of the stately, gently grooving highlife music by the end of the ’60s. The new decade saw a wide variety of multifaceted urban grooves that pointed to domestic and international shifts in youth culture. Miles Cleret of Soundway Records collected discs for five years in order to put together this survey of the era’s lesser-known musical configurations. Beautifully designed and well annotated, collections like this do so much more than just present cool tunes; they are valuable historical work.