The Rough Guide to African Roots Revival

One of the keys to success in the competitive compilation market is to find fresh and interesting thematic approaches that will hang together both musically and conceptually. The good people at World Music Network know this full well and the latest release under the label's Rough Guide brand hits upon a clever and interesting trend, highlighting the work of those who are reviving African roots music by mixing it with the ultramodern, often using homemade instruments, some built from junk-yard materials. A good starting point for this, of course, is the ‘Congotronics’ movement: Staff Benda Bilili and Kasai Allstars book-end this 12-track compilation, with Konono No 1 felicitously placed in between them. But if this troika creates a coherent framework, it's one that's flexible enough to take in some wonderfully talented musicians who are reinvigorating tradition by taking ancient instruments into previously uncharted territory: Bassekou Kouyaté and his ngoni, the Zimbabwean thumb-piano orchestra Mbira Dzenharira, the homemade Zulu guitar style of Shiyani Ngcobo and Niger's Mamane Barka, the world's last exponent of the five-string biram.

It all hangs together so well that it hardly sounds like a compilation at all but a coherent and perfectly sequenced album in its own right. A second disc features more than an hour's music from Kenya's Kenge Kenge, a ‘bonus’ disc that's a worthy album in and of itself.