While I did not purchase this tape in Africa, it is certainly one of the most awesome tapes from Africa. King Sunny Adé, along with Fela Kuti, was a central player in bringing African pop music to the world.
This record combines the new and novel studio technologies (for 1983-84), like drum machines and synths, with traditional talking drums and good old electric guitars, resulting in brilliant Paradise-Garage-if-it-had-a-Nigerian-branch funkiness.
So many styles of African music have been enhanced by electronic instruments over the years, but few have risen to such sublime heights. I mean, juju music (of which Adé is considered one of the key pillars) gets pretty repetitive. Aura, then, distinctly stands out. Fans of electro, techno and the like will find this cassette particuarly fascinating. While not a commercial smash, Aura is one of my all time favorite recordings from Nigeria.
Buy this record somewhere. I found a clean copy on vinyl in Denver in 2007 for $3.
Listen to the whole cassette on my blog. Link in bio.
