Pitchfork

If you're a fan of classic music from the African continent, you're living in rich times. Interest in the music outside of the communities it was made in is at an all-time high, and there is a new crop of intrepid reissue labels willing to put in enormous amounts of time and energy to bring this music to a whole new set of waiting ears. These are not the fly-by-night exploito outfits of old-- Popular African Music, Sound Way, Analog Africa, the newly resurrected Strut, and Graeme Counsel's recent series of African music projects on Stern's/Syllart do it the right way, tracking down the original masters when available, finding the artists, and making sure they get paid.

Analog Africa's Samy Ben Redjeb already had loads of cred for the way he handled his two previous releases, which featured Zimbabwe's Hallelujah Chicken Run Band and Green Arrows, respectively. He traveled to Zimbabwe and spent time with the creators, digging deep into their stories and emerging with great-sounding, informative compilations that thoroughly introduced the listener to both the music and the musicians. African Scream Contest moves a few thousand miles northwest to Benin and Togo, two chimney-shaped former French colonies (Togo was a German colony until WWI) squeezed between West Africa's Anglophone giants, Ghana and Nigeria.

These are small countries, usually overshadowed by their neighbors in international affairs but nonetheless culturally and musically rich, and both have experienced the numbingly common ailments of former European colonies to varying degrees. Most of Francophone Africa fell heavily under the sway of Congolese rumba in the 1960s and 70s, or developed heavily Cubanized forms of their own-- Senegal, Guinea, and Mali in particular developed their own sounds parallel to rumba. Benin and Togo were certainly not exempt from rumba's charms, but they were also caught in the highlife crossfire between Ghana and Nigeria, and the funk and soul sounds imported in massive quantities to those countries in the 60s and 70s inevitably found their way across the borders.

There's even a case to be made that Afrobeat developed just as much in Cotonou, Benin, as it did in Lagos, Nigeria. Ignace de Souza & His Melody Aces were pulling in rock elements as early as 1962, and there's plenty of funk in his work with the Black Santiagos-- if you can find a copy, Original Music's long out-of-print Ignace de Souza compilation, the Great Unknowns, Vol. 1, is wall-to-wall brilliant. Benin had an amazing surfeit of excellent bands by the early 70s, and Redjeb tracked down many members, a touch-and-go process he describes vividly in the liners, which function as both educational piece and travelogue.

The kings of the Cotonou scene were Orchestre Poly-Rythmo (there are innumerable variations on their name; the most complete is Tout Puissant Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou Dahomey). Though Redjeb makes an admirable attempt to offer as much variety as possible, Poly-Rythmo still shows up three times, once on its own and twice as a backing band. The band recorded in all kinds of styles-- check Popular African Music's Reminiscin' in Tempo disc for their highlife sound, and Sound Way's Kings of Benin Urban Groove for their funk side-- but these three all feature a particularly wicked high-speed groove that they were the first to perfect. Their "Gbeti Madjro" is stunningly funky, with a few head-spinning passages where the band strips back to just guitar, bass and drums as if to say "even at our most skeletal, we are twice as powerful as anyone else."

The quality of the recordings is excellent, and the remastering brings out the depth in each one, but the character of the sound is about as raw funk gets. Togo's Roger Damawuzan (sometimes spelled Damahouzon) has all the screaming charisma of early-70s James Brown, and his "Wait for Me" balances his gruff vocal with a cool, mellow guitar riff and burbling bass. The horns and guitar sound utterly Memphis, but the cracking drums are all West Africa. His countrymen, Napo de Mi Amor et Ses Black Devil's, turn in a burning, organ-led Afrobeat tune that recalls the style of some of their Ghanaian colleagues.

Back in Benin, Orchestre Super Jheevs des Paillotes come closest to matching Poly-Rythmo's breakneck Afrofunk groove on the amazing "Ye Nan Lon An", which swivels around an Afrobeat backbeat with a breathtaking guitar part that earns pride of place ahead of the vocals in the mix and makes that upside-down engineering decision sound completely logical. It's counterintuitive moves like this that make African funk such a constant joy to discover, and there are plenty more on this disc. But beyond that, there's just a uniqueness to these musicians' take on funk and Afrobeat that's magnetic. Dig the garage rock organ flipping out over the funk beat of El Rego et Ses Commandos' "Se Na Min". Try not to dance to Picoby Band d'Abomey's outrageously raw and rhythmic "Mi Ma Kpe Dji". If you're into funky African music you won't be able to resist them.

African Scream Contest easily joins the ranks of the most essential African funk compilations, partly by covering ground no one else has walked on, but mostly just for relentlessly kicking ass for over an hour. This is some of the best funk ever recorded anywhere, and it ranges from quick blasts of hyperspeed groove like Le Super Borgou de Parakou's "Congolaise Benin Ye" to the ruminative Fela-style Afrobeat of Vincent Ahehehinnou and Les Volcans' spicy Afro-Cuban workout. Whether you've been hunting down El Rego 45s on eBay for years or just heard and loved your first Fela reissue, this disc is emphatically for you.