Rikki Ililonga & Musi-O-Tunya: Dark Sunrise

Label: Now Again

On to Zambia we go, where frontman Rikki Ililonga and his Musi-O-Tunya band pioneered the sort-of genre known simply as Zamrock back in the '70s. As put forth on the awesome two-disc set Dark Sunrise, in Ililonga's hands — as is the case with a lot of creative African music of that decade — rock music became a Technicolor thing, flavored by traditional African rhythms but also bent thrillingly toward the psychedelic. Ililonga's guitar work — supple riffing a la the Velvets at their most playful — keeps these 31 songs rooted to the earth, which is key on pieces like "The Wings of Africa," where jubilance in the form of horns and all manner of additional instrumentation keeps pushing the song closer to heaven. But then you have some almost straight-up 70s pop songs like "Angel Black," a crisply breezy love song that pivots on Ililonga's sweetly yearning vocal, and "Sunshine Love," very much in a 60s garage-pop style. A song like "Sansa Kuwa" might just represent the single greatest synthesis of African and Western musics — and you'd better believe you can dance to it. Yet another mind-blowing treasure from Africa's recent past! And it comes in a nice, hardcover-bound package, with a trove of photos, notes and more. (M.L. Thrope)