Allah Wakbarr. Ofo the Black Company. 1972. Decca.

 A single guitar chord strikes like a blade untethering the song from earth, followed by some indecipherable male tenor mumbling, then percussion and a rhythm guitar light the fuse and, in under a minute, the rhythm section blows open the door and the song is under way. Allah Wakbarr is all rhythmic momentum, a blast furnace of pre-digital electrification that hits so directly, so quickly, you may not realize until after your first few listens that the group, Ofo the Black Company, has dispensed with conventional song structure altogether. Yet the song plays as organized as any jazz improvisation with hard rock tempo. What sounds remarkable to twenty-first century ears is, with a only debut single, how seamlessly Allah Wakbarr binds the musical histories of two continents: the emerging post-civil war rock scene of early seventies Nigeria to the visionary, urban radicalism of Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and the magus himself Miles Davis, then back again to west Africa and the great maximalist improvisations of Fela Kuti. This was music that boldly endorsed and, some might say, actually achieved, a minor sort of human equality through the senses. There will always be debate about the viability of working towards substantive equity through the political process, but generations have helped prove that during the rock and roll era, thousands, if not millions, found themselves moved enough by the pop experience to consider in both practical and moral terms the lives of those around them. I doubt if I’ll live long enough to ever see again reality reshaped in such staggering complexity by an aesthetic power. Having lived for so long in a sometimes benign, always stifling, oppressive American bigotry, you develop an antenna-like sensitivity to the threat of harm and, conversely, to its antidote: the release of tension through the cathartic expressions of popular culture. In Allah Wakbarr are the requisite tools for temporary disburdenment of the minutiae of hatred. Repeat use if necessary; the song never gets old. From 2004 Luaka Bop compilation World Psychedelics Classics 3: Love’s A Real Thing: The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa 

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