Africa Dances

If the numbers that greeted the first concentrated attempts to sell African pop to the US market in the early eighties seem low—King Sunny Adé and His African Beats’ Juju Music, in 1982, moved a mere 50k—in the seventies things were even paltrier: In his original Consumer Guide review of Africa Dances, from December 1976, Robert Christgau notes that its compiler, John Storm Roberts, still had 100 copies waiting to be sold. A lot more have heard it since then—I found it on CD at Rose Records in Chicago during the mid-nineties—and no wonder: it’s irresistibly laid out, starting with the buoyant opener, “Afrika Mokili Mobimba,” by Kalle-Roger and Rochereau with OK Jazz Orchestra, a 1960 track as instantly, self-evidently classic as “She Loves You.” Roberts compiled it from his own collection, and as it zips through the continent, it keeps up that verve.