Led by guitarist Dekula Kahanga, veteran of the legendary Tanzanian dance band Orchestra Maquis Original; also featuring Congolese singer Gaby and musicians from Kenya, Uganda, Senegal and Sweden.
Hypnotic, infectious, graceful soukous; newly recorded, channelling thousands of rollickingly good nights out. (The band plays monthly at the not so glamorous club Lilla Wien in Stockholm.)

Deadly, seventies, New York roots. Rugged, a little wired.
The basic rhythm-track is Wackies-style. The flamboyant brass chart is jazzier. Moody organ, too. Young Roots himself goes on a bit.
The band backed The Aksumites on their first 12” (Afrika Fe De Afrikan) and gigged around the City.

I Believe this reissue is not properly licensed.

Linus plays the hommel, a forerunner of the Appalachian dulcimer, flutes and rattles; and sings.
‘The hommel has existed since the middle ages, but the earliest example still intact is from 1608. Once a staple in most households in the Low Countries, it is a true folk instrument, of the people, mainly played in the past by women who used their kitchen tables as resonating surfaces to amplify & accompany traditional religious & secular tunes. Nowadays it is seen rarely outside of museums in Brussels & other places you most likely have never heard of. It is not spectacular, its simplest version is just a long thin box with strings on top. Some of the strings are melody strings, which have frets placed underneath them, the others are drone strings that have no frets. Traditionally it was strummed with a goose feather & notes were made by sliding a hard stick with a handle, from fret to fret on the melody strings leaving the drone strings ringing openly. The constant hum of the drones is where the name of the instrument comes from: in Flemish, a bumblebee is a hommel.’
Lovely stuff from the wonderful Okraina.

Encapsulating the culmination of a joyously ambitious twelve-day jazz project mounted in 1978 at the ancient amphitheatre Tasso della Quercia, in Rome: the collaboration (in different group configurations) between key Italian avant-gardists like the saxophonists Tommaso Vittorini, Eugenio Colombo and Maurizio Giammarco, trumpeter Alberto Corvini and trombonist Danilo Terenzi, together with visiting players such as Steve Lacy, Steve Potts and Evan Parker, Roswell Rudd, Frederick Rzewski and Noel McGhee.

The Kabbalistic Dixieland of Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum, joined here by saxophonist Steve Lacy, trombonist Garrett List and vibraphonist Karl Berger, recording for the legendary Italian label Horo in 1977. The MEV in all of its discordant, subversive, improvisatory glory.

Six songs juxtaposing torrents of sliced and processed audio with the warmth of the human voice.
With Norah Jones, Josh Mease, Clare Manchon, Natalie Beridze, Pascal Le Boeuf, and Desmond White. 
‘Answers the question of what a collaboration between Björk and Venetian Snares would sound like, if both were more aware of the drawbacks of both diatonic tedium and ceaseless harmonic wasteland, respectively.’

Deep, hypnotic high-life — fused with traditional Ahyewa rhythms — in six sections each side, recorded in 1975 at Ghana Films Studio for the Kumasi-based Ofo Bros label, by this legendary veteran of the Star De Republic and K. Gyasy bands.

Coloured vinyl.

A sultry version of the Gershwin / Heyward aria, more body-rocking than spiritual, led by an identified singer. and swinging horns; and a rollicking Take The A Train, with solos by Roland Alphonso, Lester Sterling and Don Drummond.
Class.

The pianist James Edward Manuel’s only release is one of the deepest custom-press jazz recordings of them all.
Jaman studied under greats like Earl Bostic and Horace Parlan. Gigging on the Buffalo club scene, one of his early trios included the renowned bassist John Heard and drummer Clarence Becton, till both were poached one night by a visiting Jon Hendricks. Other sidemen include Sun Ra Arkestra bassist Juini Booth and Ahmad Jamal regular Sabu Adeyola (also of Kamal & The Brothers).
Pressed in tiny quantities by the Mark Records custom service in 1974, and issued with a stock landscape cover, Sweet Heritage presents a soulful mixture of covers and originals. In particular the flying, spiritual sound of Free Will and the upful, Latin-tinged In The Fall Of The Year — both Jaman compositions — have turned the LP into a legendary collector’s classic.

Funky mid-tempo sister soul, recorded at Dave Hamilton’s studio in Detroit. (Plus Little Ann’s tribute to the producer, on the flip.)

‘Spectacular examples across the board: mesmeric guitar playing in the Barotse style, which uses tunings from the local thumb-piano tradition; kangombia thumb-piano music; rollicking drum ensembles; and jaw-dropping performances of siyemboka, Barotseland’s national music, played on silimba — giant wooden xylophones, sometimes five metres in length, played by four or five men at once’ (The Wire).