The roots music chunk of Jali Kunda is some of the strongest griot material on record. From the first few seconds of the first track, "Allah I'aake" ("God's Will"), the energy bristles and never lets up throughout the beautifully mixed field recordings. Calling the acoustic material traditional is a bit of a misnomer unless you accept the fluidity of tradition, since my favorite track here, "Mariama," boasts a wicked nyanyer riff backed by the unusual addition of drums. This piece is so powerful, I'm grateful for Robert Palmer's introduction to the book which reminds me that much of traditional-based African music can only be understood when its divinatory and magical aspects are taken into consideration. In "Mariama" and in other cuts that feature the ecstatic Mandinka vocal style you either love or hate, depending on your tolerance for over-the-top emotional expression, the spiritual dimension is unmistakable. And so is the connection to American blues and gospel. Jali Kunda is one-half of a wonderful release that suffers from the grab-bag production approach that I thought ellipsis arts had finally outgrown.

"So that's the macarena!" a waggish co-worker taunted me as I was playing "Banda Yango" from Tshala Muana's Mutuashi (Sterns) at the office the other day. "Bob's listening to the macarena." While Muana's collaboration with Cuban musicians soars far above this insult and hits darned exciting peaks at times, including Dally Kimoko's chiming guitar solo in said song, failure to fling itself whole hog into the Zairean-Cuban connection and a bit of murk in the mix keeps Mutuashi on the back burner. Muana is a terrific songwriter with an appealing vocal style that likes to pile syllables ahead of the rhythm, but the inevitable call to "mutashi" in the instrumental section of most songs plus a few too many ululations ground on me as much as the lackluster horn parts. Cranking Mutuashi at loud volume surmounts the majority of these shortcomings, but all-in-all the soukous, mutuashi, and Cuban son hopscotch fails to deliver a numbing blow to the head.

You'd think a group called Edward the Second and the Red Hot Polkas would pretty much play polka music. You'd also expect Two Step to Heaven to be an overlooked classic for Cooking Vinyl to just now reissue this 1989 British release in America. Wrong on both counts, kapusta breath! In the tradition of more inspired English two-tone acts like the Specials, Edward and company concentrate on dubwise, reggoid renditions of retro dance music. My favorite cut, "Jenny Lind," is a mbaqanga-ish, rock steady thing with sampled snippets of a raver trying to get his girl out on the floor for another dance, but you need a high-power lens to set the backing track apart from the one on the rock steady song that follows, "Pomp and Pride." Though it features a peppy accordion and appealing slide guitar and horn arrangement, "Untitled Polka" is one hundred percent reggae, as is "Bjorn Again Polka." "Lover's Two Step" is actually the old one-drop with Augustus Pablo-style melodica, but "The Queen's Jig" is recognizably a jig animated by pinball dub effects. All in all, a nice enough disc, but not quite nice enough to warrant the reissue unless someone from Edwardland has vaunted over my head to stellar fame. Still, where the hell's the polka? Or where's the joke?

Hoping to get a fix on why this disc is reappearing now, I posed the question to London club-scene expert and disintegrating DJ, The Beat's "Hey, Mr. Music" columnist, Dave Hucker (see "Hey, Mr. Holm"). But, enervated from an all-night fete playing Italian-language disco tracks, Spanish sub-Morricone film soundtracks and Martin Denny lps (all the way through, both sides) in a dirty seaside pub in Brighton, Hucker was a little vague in his response. "Do I know Edward the Second and the Red Hot Polkas?" he demanded over transatlantic phone lines. "I don't know whether Edward the Second was the king known as Edward the Confessor, or whether he's related to Chilly Willie and the Red Hot Peppers. 1989 was a bit of a blur, as far as I can remember. Maybe they are a famous indie/Britpop combo now," he blathered. "Maybe someone thought it was a good idea at the time." Then, as Hucker clamped his hand over the mouthpiece to shush someone, I heard a gravely voice in the background that sounded like, of all people, my fair-weather friend the Whale. But it couldn't be.

All world music reviews by Bob Tarte from:www.technobeat.com