THE SPECIALIST

IMAGINE a place where Muslims and Christians live in peace and harmony, and the dancefloor is a sacred place where those of all faiths, or none, can get down together. Afenmailand in southern Nigeria’s Edo state is not paradise, for the ubiquitous problems of poverty and disease persist; but in the 1970s and 1980s when Alhaji Waziri Oshomah recorded the tracks compiled here, the region seemed to exist in a heterogeneous harmony that was a world away from the hostilities and divisions that trouble so much of our planet.

Following Alice Coltrane’s Turiyasangitananda and the gospel soul compilation The Time For Peace Is Now, this is the third volume in Luaka Bop’s World Spirituality Classics series and finds Oshomah mixing Judeo-Christian imagery and the teachings of Islam in lyrics which sermonise ecumenically about piety and reverence over throbbing, sinuous dance rhythms that fuse Nigerian highlife, palm wine guitars and other African tribal styles with western pop tropes.

Now in his mid-seventies and a devout Muslim who still performs regularly, Oshomah was disowned by his Islamic parents who