Africa: Drum, Chant & Instrumental Music (side A)

1976's Africa: Drum, Chant & Instrumental Music (side A) is a diverse and impressive album.  Its recordings cover a broad geographic section spanning 3 countries in northern Africa: Niger, Mali, and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso).  The music is similarly diverse, with percussion, melodic instruments, and vocals all sharing space.  The quality that unites all of the music is its rhythmic richness—no matter the arrangement, it grooves and flows with syncopation that feels unintuitive to a Western listener.  The highlights for me are the intricately layered drums, but it's also an impressively consistent album.  The simple field recordings capture the performances nicely, though sometimes the instrument and vocal balances reflect the limitations in the recordings.  The textured paper of the original cover is quite nice too.