Nigeria Soul Fever

All but two of the 16 tracks here were recorded between 1977 and 1980 at the height of the disco craze, which took hold in the clubs of Lagos as ubiquitously as it did on the dance floors of Europe and the US. Some of it is a blatant imitation, with little indication that this is Nigerian music at all. Tee Mac's ‘Living Everyday’ finds singer Marjorie Barnes searching for her inner Gloria Gaynor; the synth-funk of Arakatula's ‘Mr Been To’ could have been lifted from a Stevie Wonder album; and ‘Disco Dancing’ by Angela Starr is a piece of insubstantial Western-style disco froth. But it gets better. Christy Essien's 1979 hit ‘You Can’t Change a Man’ sounds like a disco classic in any language. Joni Haastrup, who sang with Fela Kuti's band in the 1960s, successfully updates Afrobeat for the disco era on ‘Free My People’ and ‘Do the Funkro’, while Akin Richards and the Executives sound thrillingly like Earth, Wind & Fire shaking their booty in a Lagos speakeasy on ‘Afrikana Disco’. Best of all, though, is the highlife-Afrobeat-disco hybrid forged by Jimmy Sherry & the Musik Agents on the 13-minute ‘Nwaeze’. Boogie wonderland, indeed.