The Daktaris: Soul Explosion [DAPTONE]

Why you'll love it

Daptone's remastered reissue adds a bonus song, "In The Middle," and a download card. It's the record that brought together future members of the Dap-Kings and Antibalas, playing Fela-style Afrobeat with the real thing's swagger.

This edition

• Remastered
• Bonus track added
• Download card included

About the album

Every good record shop has a few records with a tall tale attached, and this one built its own. In 1997 a crew of Brooklyn musicians cut a set of hard Afrobeat, gave it a vintage cover, a 'Produced in Nigeria' label and a full roster of invented personnel (names dreamed up by TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe), and let listeners assume they'd found a lost Lagos gem.

Gabriel Roth, Mike Wagner and Philippe Lehman produced it, and Cameroonian drummer Jojo Kuo drives the band on drums, vocals and percussion. "Musicawa Silt" sets up a long, hypnotic groove, "Quiet Man Is Dead Man" and "Super Afrobeat" sound like Fela Kuti's Africa 70 at full strength, and "Voodoo Soul Stew" tips its hat to Mulatu Astatke's Ethiopian jazz. The name, by the way, means doctors in Swahili.

Desco put it out first in 1998, and several of the players went on to form the backbone of the Daptone sound. Read "Eltsuhg Ibal Lasiti" backwards for the whole story; we did, and we still can't believe we fell for it.

Also at Kops: more The Daktaris on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Daptone / Desco (cat# DAP-049), a reissue of the 1998 album.