Recorded on July 19, 1977, this double LP (reissued as a two-CD set) contained live versions of songs that appeared on several of their 1971-1977 albums, as well as one (
"Living Loving Feeling"
) that only came out as a single.
Osibisa
, who anticipated many of the features of the
worldbeat
sound, cover a lot of ground on this lengthy set -- maybe too much for some tastes. Sometimes the material gets close to traditional African music in its rhythms and chanting; at others, it nearly treads on
jazz fusion
territory, though not in a bad way. And while
singer and multi-instrumentalist
Teddy Osei
says in the liner notes that the band wasn't influenced by
Santana
, the Afro-
Latin
rhythms and chant-style vocals in some of the songs certainly remind you of
, though again not in an objectionable fashion. There's also some
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
-style flute playing, and a rendition of their substantial 1976 British hit
"Sunshine Day"
that finds them at their most
pop
-friendly. While they might not have been the most innovative or original of these kind of groups, overall this is a lively document of an ensemble that fused African,
soul
-
funk
, and some
and
jazz
elements when that sort of mixture was far less accessible outside Africa than it would be in subsequent decades. ~ Richie Unterberger