Pitchfork

Without West African music, we wouldn't have pop as we know it. The rhythms of African traditional music and the storytelling craft of traveling griots-- relatives of the early bluesmen-- form a huge part of the ancestral basis for jazz, blues, and, by extension, rock'n'roll, reggae, and all of their modern counterparts. The modern world is a cultural vortex, sweeping disparate strands into new forms, and in the 20th century all of the musical descendants of Africa's rhythmic past-- originally spread through scattered Diaspora by the slave trade-- came flooding back to Africa cross-pollinated with European compositional traditions. In the wake of independence, many young musicians felt the need to break free from the styles their parents had danced to and invent something of their own. It was the 1960s, and ample inspiration flowed in on vinyl from the West, as did instruments, amplifiers, and recording equipment.

Psychedelia, soul, and funk are words we use to broadly describe music, but they're almost intentionally open-ended-- and all three were global phenomena in the 1960s and 70s. African musicians reared on highlife and Cuban rhumba considered them as a unified palette, drawing freely from each as well as their own traditions to create the styles we know today-- Afrobeat, mbalax, soukous, benga, mbaqanga, and so on. The variety of sounds is staggering, and most of it is still waiting to be discovered outside of Africa. With such a huge amount of music and so little means of hearing it, we have to turn to compilations to help us find our way into it and thankfully the range of choices is currently growing steadily.

The latest chance to get your feet wet comes courtesy of David Byrne's Luaka Bop label, in the third installment of their excellent World Psychedelic Classics series and the first to feature a range of artists rather than focusing on just one. Love's a Real Thing draws from across West Africa, focusing on the thrilling juncture of Africa's musical history where experimentation was the rule and Africa, unbeknownst to most Westerners, experienced its own psychedelic era, complete with attendant social upheaval, flared pants, fluorescent colors, odd hairdos, and generation gap. The songs here run a good gamut from the relatively conservative Afro-Cuban groove of No. 1 de No. 1 (the name presumably means "best of the best") to the flailing, heavy acid-funk of Ofo the Black Company.

The disc starts with a single smack of a snare drum, which sets Orchestra Poly-Rhythmo de Cotonou Dahomey's "Minsato Le, Mi Dayihome" off and running with snaking guitars and jerking rhythms. Benin's best musical export are credited here without the "T.P." prefix they usually affixed to their name, an acronym for "tout pouissant," French for "all-mighty" and not at all a misnomer. Unlike most Afropop compilations, which tend to focus on one country or a specific sound, this one revels in veering back and forth between Anglo and Francophone countries, tossing heavy funk in with British Invasion-tinged soul and conga-heavy neo-traditional psych in an intentional display of stylistic breadth.

They've dug up some real gems, too, such as the title track, by Gambia's Super Eagles, a ripping soul/Britpop song full of sinewy guitar lines and dueling lead vocalists. Moussa Doumbia's "Keleya" takes the organ-heavy sound of the Malian hotel bands and throttles it with a gruff vocal attack, while Sorry Bamba's "Porry" is a brilliant, spacious Saharan riff on Cuban son, swimming in organ and stately Andalusian horns. Cameroon's Manu Dibango is an African funk superstar, but the track they've chosen here, the closing theme to his soundtrack for the Senegalese film Ceddo, is an odd, inspired choice, surrounding traditional African marimba with a slow funk burn for an ultimately majestic instrumental. Nigerian William Onyeabor's "Better Change Your Mind" is a synth-slathered prog-funk killer whose title refers not to changing an opinion so much as an entire mindset, reaching for a decidedly flower power-ish ideal of international harmony and cooperation.

Even with all the variety, there's not a weak selection here, nor anything that feels out of place. A glorious eclecticism is one of the defining characteristics of African popular music in its 1970s golden era, so it's entirely appropriate for a compilation like this to turn on a dime with every track. Beyond that, this offers plenty of other accoutrements like informative liner notes and a multimedia video for "Minsato Le, Mi Dayihome", not to mention the fact that only two of these songs are currently in print anywhere else. Simply put, this is a fantastic introduction to a broad range of vintage West African sounds, and one that's likely to please both devoted followers of African music and curiosity-seekers alike.