International records / Internet Archive

Africa Dances

From the label: "I first compiled and issued Africa Dances in the early 1970s, when almost nobody in the US or Europe knew that any of this music existed, and most of the handful who did (mostly ethnomusicologists) were still dismissing it with contempt as "westernized." It appeared on the Authentic Records, and was not just authentic but unique, since I had invented the label only to issue.this one album. At the time, Africa Dances illustrated the wisdom of Agatha Christie's dictum, "never be first," by vanishing instantly into oblivion. Things began to turn around in 1978, when Robert Christ…