Customer Reviews

Oxfam Africa

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This summary of Africa's music obviously has to include a huge variety of music from the continent, and it does. It's mostly because African music is not my favorite that the rating is not higher. There are styles to be expected, like Senegalian pop from Youssou N'Dour, Congolese soukous, (which on this album sunds sad rather than happy), and a great track from Nigeria, Abami, which is a fusion of "Afro-pop, Afro-beat and Afro-jazz," and rolls along in an adictive way. But this album also includes a lot of side trips to other African styles you don't usually hear, including Arabic tracks from Morocco and Algeria; Arabesque from Aisha Kandisha's Jarring Effects, and Bellemou, who contributes a catchy song in the Algerian rai style. There's also great Latin-sounding Portuguese music from Cape Verde, a French-language song from Madagascar, and soulful South African reggae (Lucky Dube's Prisoner, with its powerful lyrics). There's also some traditional music, as well as a very westernized jazz track. There's a very beautiful song from Guinea, and a slow, sad song about Aids. Much of this album is really made for dancing. Some of the songs I like very much, and others I don't appreciate as much. Some of the proceeds go to helping Oxfam and its wonderful work worldwide, which is great.

It's not bad. I'm new to African music, but I was hoping to find some stuff from Mali, Kenya, Ethiopia or Tanzania here - and there's nothing from there. There's a lot from southern Africa; two tracks from Mozambique, two from South Africa, and stuff from Madagascar, Zimbabwe and the Congo. Interesting tracks from Morocco (electronic Arabesque) and Algeria (Spanish inflected rai).

In general, though, there's a definite pop or modern sound to ALL of the music here. I was hoping to get more traditional African music in what's supposed to be an overview of African music. The unauthentic jazz track from Ibrahim Abdullah (South Africa) really irritated me, and the English language reggae track from Lucky Dube didn't really sound African. Tito Paris track from Cape Verde almost sounded like an excuse to slip Latin music into an African compilation. Though it sounds like cliche, I had hoped to get the feel of the elephants, Maasai, rhinos and national parks that is really Africa.

The enhanced portion of the CD was very enlightening, showing how Oxfam helps in Africa. Perhaps I'm being too harsh to a release whose sale goes to charity. But it was a short CD in length, and they could have replaced the jazz track with some music from Mali.

Some people will love this CD I'm sure, but I liked only half or more of it. Still, it's not too bad