The Waxonia Desk’s selection
Six records from Detroit, Lagos and Accra, offered as one subject rather than three genres. The distance between them is geographic and almost nothing else.
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Marvin Gaye / What's Going On
The obvious one, and four decades of broadcasting have made it harder to hear rather than easier. A record everybody agrees about is a difficult thing to keep alive.
Curtis Mayfield / Move On Up
Nine minutes of forward motion that works on a dancefloor and on daytime radio, which is a rare combination — and it is the long version that earns the claim, not the edit.
Fela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70 / Shakara
Fifteen minutes before the vocal arrives. Programming a record like this for an audience trained to expect a hook inside thirty seconds is the whole problem, and it is worth solving.
Manu Dibango / Soul Makossa
A Cameroonian B-side that a New York DJ turned into a disco hit. The clearest single case for the argument this list is making: the route mattered more than the origin.
Ebo Taylor / Heaven
Ghana rather than Nigeria, and looser than anything Lagos allowed. Much of what reached Britain as afrobeat was highlife that nobody had bothered to distinguish.
Herbie Hancock / Chameleon
The record where a jazz musician of the first rank decides the groove is the interesting problem. If acid jazz began as a joke, this is the thing the joke was about.