Pape Nziengui Et Son Groupe – Kadi Yombo (1989)

While the global north was still busy jerking off to paternalistic (Fourth) World Music approaches, people like Papé Nziengui from Gabon were already far ahead. On Kadi Yombo, the harpist brought together traditional Tsogho music with synths and screaming electric guitar solos. What was far out on every conceivable level in 1989 and was at times considered iconoclastic by his contemporaries, in retrospect allows comparisons to the Madchester sound just as much as it seems to be the godfather of the music produced much later in Mali by Luka Productions and others. Visionary music that makes the New Age dawn on the dancefloor. Kristoffer Cornils