As a rock-obssessed teenager, I bought Osibisa’s self-titled debut album on its release in 1971 and its follow-up, Woyaya. I can’t claim that I was a world music pioneer. I was simply intrigued by Afro¬rock, which at the time seemed like another faddish subgenre to file alongside acid-rock, folk¬rock, jazz-rock, space-rock et al. By the time of Osibisa’s third album, Heads, and Happy Children a year later, I had moved on. I felt I had done Afro-rock and I ignored the releases in favour of new fashions (Ziggy Stardust and Dark Side of the Moon, I seem to recall). If that sounds crass and ignorant, it was. But it was also understandable. There was simply nobody around to explain that Osibisa was the tip of a huge world of timeless African music – we had to wait several decades to discover the fantastic sounds being made all over Africa in the 70s via the crate-digging archive releases of labels such as Soundway and Analog Africa.

So catching up with Osibisa all these years on seems like an opportunity missed. Heads finds saxophonist Teddy Osei and his London-based Ghanaian and Caribbean band mixing Fela Kuti-inspired Afro-beat, funked-up highlife grooves, a thrilling hybrid of tribal polyrhythms and rock drumming, Santana-style guitar pyrotechnics and jazz-rock horn solos. And the sound has not dated one whit – much of the material would not sound out of place on recent releases by, say, Tony Allen, Ariya Astrobeat Arkestra or Antibalas.

By the release of Happy Children in 1973, the classic Osibisa line-up featured on the the first three LPs had undergone considerable changes and the group lacked a guitarist, resulting in the horns and keyboards being given even greater prominence. There’s also a stronger American soul/funk feel – the band had just returned from recording the soundtrack to the film Superfly TNT in Hollywood. But the record still contains at least two Osibisa classics in Somaja, based on a traditional Ghanaian chant, and ‘Fire, an irresistible Afro-beat dance tune that remains a highlight of Osibisa’s live shows to this day.