Afro Female

This meeting of the minds and bands of Afro-funk creator Fela Anikulapo-Kuti and American vibist and R&B/jazz innovator Roy Ayers is a collaboration that shouldn't work on the surface. Fela's music was raw, in your face politically and socially, and musically driven by the same spirit as James Brown's JBs. At the time of this recording in 1979, Ayers had moved out of jazz entirely and become an R&B superstar firmly entrenched in the disco world. Ayers' social concerns – on record – were primarily cosmological in nature. So how did these guys pull off one of the most badass jam gigs of all time, with one track led by each man and each taking a full side of a vinyl album? On hand were Fela's 14-piece orchestra and an outrageous chorus made up of seven of his wives and five male voices.

The three pages of liner notes squished into eye-straining type that greet the purchaser of Jason Ricci and his band's highly anticipated follow-up to their roaring 2007 debut for the appropriately named Eclecto Groove label, boil down to this: it's a group effort with Ricci as only one component, and the members understand that their genre-mashing approach is not strictly blues, but they don't care. There's a lot more, of course, but one listen to this set that shifts from good-timey shuffles such as the sunshiny "Sweet Lovin'" to the jazz-rock fusion of the following "Holler for Craig Lawler" and the Latin influenced instrumental "Ptryptophan Pterodactyl" is enough to convince any newcomer that Ricci and co…..