Belle Epoque Volume 3: Dioba

With Belle Epoque Vol. 3 - Dioba, the estimable Sterns Africa label has completed another definitive archive project documenting West Africa's post-colonial 'belle epoque' of the 1960s and 1970s. The three two-disc volumes in the series present the hits, highlights and lesser known treasures made by the Rail Band, the era's pre-eminent Malian modern-roots band - which featured world music stars-to-be Salif Keita and Mory Kante, both winningly represented - in a collection that is both as scholarly and as vibrant as the label's The Syliphone Years series, showcasing the contemporaneous bands of neighboring Guinea. Dioba showcases the Rail Band in all its splendid moods and colours: from Keita's spiritualised and virtuosic "Maki" and "Soyomba," through Ganessy's fierce going on feral "Kadia Kandian" and "Djamban," the re-Africanised Stax-Volt soul of Kante's "Mariba Yassa" and his mesmeric take on Afrobeat, "Sinsimba," spacier and nimbler than originator Fela Kuti's style, on to the rumba-infused "Foliba" and "Talassa." Two 1982 tracks, "Diby" and "Diabate," feature the psychedelicised keyboards of Alfred Coulibaly, a late but valuable addition to the line-up, inhabiting adjacent territory to that being explored by the American keyboard player Marco Benevento on Me Not Me (The Royal Potato Family, 2009), two and a half decades later.

Third and final volume in the critically-acclaimed Belle Epoque series that tells a 13-year story - from 1970 to 1983 - of Mali's legendary group. Full-color, 20-page booklet with notes detailing the history of the band and full-page reproductions of original album covers.