Chris May reviews Authenticité: The Syliphone Years and Rail Band's Soundiata.

The 1960s and 1970s are often referred to as the “golden years” of African music. As more and more African countries freed themselves from colonialism, a wave of artists emerged who celebrated their own cultural legacies rather than those validated by their erstwhile European rulers. This post-colonial generation played roots-based styles employing traditional instruments and African-language lyrics, but also embraced advances in Western technology—electric guitars and fit-for-purpose recording studios in particular.

The music was the best of both worlds and, creatively speaking, the 1960s and 1970s were indeed golden years. With hindsight, they were also special for another reason—they came before the birth of world music in the mid-1980s. Prior to the arrival of a global audience, African artists made music intended purely for African ears. But as sales figures rose in Europe and America, many artists began to tailor their music accordingly. The results were not necessarily “worse” or “better,” or even “less African,” than what came before, but they were different.

Two recent double-CD releases preserve some of the most pioneering and long unavailable West African electric music of the post-colonial, pre-world music era. Authenticité: The Syliphone Years is a various artists compilation of tracks recorded in Guinea 1965-80. Soundiata is a collection of 1969-82 tracks by Mali's Rail Band, half of them featuring the band's celebrated early vocalists, Salif Keita and Mory Kante.

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Rail Band - Belle Epoque Vol 1

Robin Denselow reviews Rail Band's Belle Epoque Vol 1.

There was a time, in the 1970s and early 80s, when the National Railways of Mali could claim to employ the best house band anywhere in Africa, at the station hotel in Bamako. After all, Salif Keita began his career with the Rail Band, and after he had left, the new line-up included another great singer, Mory Kanté, along with that inspired guitarist Djelimady Tounkara. This double CD, the first in a set of three, is a reminder of those glory days that fails to quite do justice to this legendary band. There are some historic songs here, including the sturdy, rousing Soundjata, recorded in 1972 and featuring Salif Keita's soaring vocals on a praise song to the founder of the Mandingo empire. And there's an epic, if uneven, 28-minute treatment of the same theme, featuring both Kanté and Tounkara. It's a shame that the tracks have been assembled in an apparently random order from different periods of the band's career, rather than allowing each release to tackle a specific era.

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