It's tricky to get a fix on what's distinctive in classic Ghanaian dance-band music. It shares a lot with its neighbour Nigeria, with whom it enjoyed a fairly free exchange of talent throughout the 1970s - the Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer and political dissident Fela Kuti holed up there for a while, for instance, guesting on other people's records. And it has a complex relationship with American music: the patterns of influence between the likes of Santana, Wilson Pickett and home-grown stars such as the Aliens defy analysis, not least because they all played together on the same miraculous bill one night in Accra in 1971. Still, if one can't quite isolate the DNA of Ghanaian music, one can always note the family resemblances and admire the variety. This double-disc Soundway compilation of rare and previously unreissued tracks, generously annotated and illustrated, offers the perfect opportunity. There's a lot to take in, and a lot of tracks which, once heard, you won't want to take off. Especially addictive are the sinuous Latin blues and Kuti sax rips on Basa Basa Soundz's Dr Solutsu; the twitchy funk and fluting, Ethiopian-style vocals on Christy Azuma's Din Ya Sugri, and the crying cascades of guitar on the latest track included here, Kyeremateng Atwede's I Go Die for You, from 1981. Political and economic instability caused Ghana's record industry to collapse soon afterwards. Sad, but it had a heck of a golden age.
* Ed Lake
