v/a: Bambara Mystic Soul: The Raw Sound of Burkina Faso 1974-1979

Label: Analog Africa

At the time these sweet jams were committed to magnetic tape, the western Africa nation known as Burkina Faso was still called Upper Volta, but that's splitting hairs. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (we hate broken records here at the record shop), Bambara Mystic Soul is another killer collection of music you've never heard before on one of the foremost reissue/reclamation labels on earth, Analog Africa. In comparison to other African forms of rock, funk, highlife etc, the Burkinabè sound actually benefits from a slightly lower-fidelity production quality; because the bass bleeds just a bit it fills in the spaces and makes all of this colorful funk seem smoother and warmer. It also sounds (admittedly, to these Western ears) a little more African, as if the musicians were less interested in (or, in a land-locked nation, more sheltered from) western R&B and Caribbean strains of soul and funk. The call-and-response vocal stands out among the brash horns and funk-guitar on Compaoré Issouf's "Dambakale," while "Sie Koumgolo" by Coulibaly Tidiani builds off an awesome set of interlocking rhythmic lines that'd have any beat-searching producer salivating.