Big Noise — the Mambo Inn compilation
Various artists
Hannibal/Rykodisc through Festival
Reviewed by Norm Dixon
One of the refreshing aspects of the world music craze has been its growing popularity among the more aware and open-minded club and dance audiences. This phenomenon is at its most advanced in London and other British urban centres, reflecting the ongoing cultural cross-pollination and diversity among Britain's youth.
It is a scene that, on the whole, rejects blatant commercial exploitation and not only embraces the eclectic mix of the dance beats of the world but is prepared explore new and rediscover past artists and styles on their own merits, without being blinded by industry-imposed music categories.
On any given Friday and Saturday night at the Loughborough Hotel in Brixton — the Mambo Inn — it is not unusual for dance floors to filled with people grooving to the latest acid jazz, Zairean rumba, '50s be bop, township jive from South Africa and Zimbabwe, '60s jazz-funk, hip hop, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian classics, the latest pop from Algeria and trance-inducing bhangra from south Asia — and that's in the first hour.
It is no surprise that it is out of this milieu that the WOMAD festivals were born, as well as the innovative Realworld, World Circuit and Earthworks labels. The informative and entertaining Straight No Chaser magazine has dubbed the musical movement it champions "world jazz jive".
Big Noise is a representative sampling of the world jazz jive you might encounter at the Mambo Inn. It kicks off with a couple of very funky club remixes of tunes by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the qawwali master from Pakistan, and Khaled, the leading exponent of Algerian pop known as rai.
Without pausing for breath, some of Africa's finest and grooviest artists burst from the speakers: Angelina's ecstatic highlife from Ghana; Afro-rumba from Zaire's Kanda Bongo Man and Guinea Bissau's more-Cuban-than-Cuba superstar, Tchando.
From Afro-Latin music from Africa we hurtle across the oceans to hear the cream of Afro-Latin music from Latin America: Mambomania's manic reworking of the Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn classic "Take the 'A' train"; Puerto Rico's Andy Montanez's simmering "El Swing"; and Brazilian percussion legend Airto Moreira's driving "Samba de Flora".
North America is represented by the Young-Holt Trio's cooking "Wack Wack" — as the liner notes say, "as tight as a camel's bum in a sandstorm" — and the giant of the mighty Hammond B-3 organ, Jimmy McGriff, who blasts out a mega-cool version of Sly Stone's "acid soul" number, "You're the One".
The last track — and what better way to end this 70-minute religious experience — is Luther Barnes and the Red Bud Gospel Choir's pew-shaking, rafter-rattling "My God Can Do Anything". If I thought heaven could be even half that funky, even I'd believe!
This album should not be ignored.