Eboni Band

In 1981, Motown producer Art Stewart travelled to Abidjan to scope out the possibility of a series of African-American collaborations with artists on the Ivory Coast label Eboni Records. He was so impressed with what he heard that he flew a troupe of Ivorian musicians back to Los Angeles to record with Motown’s top sessioners. Out of those sessions came this album, bringing together the Eboni’s house band and American soul and R&B titans such as James Brown’s trombone player Fred Wesley, trumpeter Nolan Smith, saxophonist Ernie Fields Jr and bassist Greg Middleton, who also handled the arrangements. Motown never released the album on the grounds that American audiences ‘weren’t ready’ and it only received a limited release in Africa. More than 40 years on and now widely available for the first time, the album has been remastered and makes for an intriguing hybrid.

Three of the five lengthy tracks are bog-standard early-80s international disco-funk. More interesting are ‘I Love All’, a lilting folk-tinged tune with vocals by the Eboni crew, and ‘Fasso’ (The Motherhood), on which kora and ngoni combine with synths and Motown’s state-of-the-art production, with the Ivorian Aisha Koné singing hauntingly over a Mande groove.