VA - Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81

In the seven years since Soundway put out their first comp, they've become arguably the finest reissue purveyor of floor-shaking grooves from Nigeria, Panama, Colombia and, most recently, Guadeloupe & Martinique (on last month's sublime Tumbele set). By focusing on hard grooves from the '60s and '70s, they've helped move tastes away from the slick “worldbeat” production values that dominated the market in the '80s and '90s. Ghana Special is a return home of sorts, and a follow-up to the remarkable Ghana Soundz collection from 2002 that started it all for the label. The heavy funk heard on that disc must have made many a DJ in the rare groove scene want to trade in their jazz-funk records for these records that were more than convincingly “funky”, and indeed many did pursue this route. Since then, Soundway boss Miles Cleret has toned down the overt funk influence and has shown that his preferences have matured, though not at the expense of the dancefloor–far from it, in fact. The two discs here show a diversity that the Nigerian deluge of last year, great as it was, could not match. In fact, there are so many fantastic tracks here, I’ll be digging into this for a long time to come. One of the top African collections of 2009.