Funk Generation

The making of Congo Funk!, our long-awaited journey to the musical heart of the African continent, took the Analog Africa Team on two journeys to Kinshasa and one to Brazzaville. Selected meticulously from around 2000 songs and boiled down to 14, this compilation aims to showcase the many facets of the funky, hypnotic and schizophrenic tunes emanating from the two Congolese capitals nestled on the banks of the Congo River.

"Harlem Sessions" sounds like your favorite mix tape you made many years ago; the one that you keep playing over and over because it has all your favorite, desert-island songs. It's a groovilicious compilation of killer soul cuts from the 1970s, with blaxploitation films as the main theme. Of course, you can't realistically include EVERY great soul joint from the 1970s on two CDs, but this compilation does a great job trying. A collection of this nature has some of the usual cast of characters like Curtis Mayfield ("Superfly" and "Little Child Running Wild" from his must-have soundtrack to "Superfly") and Isaac Hayes ("Shaft"), but we also get unexpected nuggets from Cuban jazz legend Mongo Santamaria ("We Got Latin Soul"), Gil Scott-Heron's "The Bottle," Shirley Brown's sassy "Woman to Woman," Bob James' "Night Crawler," and Bootsy Collins' hugely influential and oft-sampled "I'd Rather Be With You." This collection gets it right in so many ways that's impossible to pass this winner up. All that's missing are the bell-bottoms and an Afro wig.