By Way of Zaire

So I find the Sub-Saharan pan-ethnography of Stewart Copeland's The Rhythmatist release from the mid 80s, one of the best true world-fusion albums. It didn't just try to slap the random vocal bit and percussion fill with a disco beat and call it worldbeat. It really mixed various African structures and styles with jazz, rock and avant-garde. Needless to say, almost no one knows about it. One of the standout persons on the release is Ray Lema (from then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Well, I have one of Ray Lema's solo albums; 1989s Nangadeef. I can't say it is as good as his collaboration with Stewart, but that may be because this album lacks Copeland's imitable stamp: deep percussive fury and untethered openness. This album is more synthetic and focuses on Lema as a vocalist (which is good), but not enough to his keyboard skills or filling out the rest of the sound. It falls a little too far into the pandering to a fizzled out middle ground of accessibility at times, but is stronger than a lot of similar efforts from that period. It does make curious as to what else he has released, since his honeyed voice and solid melodies are worth investigating further.