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African ChillZone Vol. 1

Sixty tracks and the volume that started the series — and the one most interested in women's voices from across the continent.

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African ChillZone Vol. 1

The first volume sets the template for everything that follows, and it does so with an unusually literary opening. Where a set like this could easily have led with a hit, it begins with a kora player and then a Sade collaboration, which tells you immediately that the brief is depth rather than energy.

It is also the most female-led volume in the series, and that is clearly deliberate. Roughly two-thirds of these tracks are fronted by women, drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Zambia, France and the United States.

What to listen for

Sona Jobarteh's "Reflections" opens the set, and she is a genuinely significant figure: the first woman from a major West African griot family to become a professional kora player, in a tradition that had been passed exclusively from father to son for seven centuries.

Sade's "Slave Song" live with The Abyssinians is the second track and the hinge of the whole playlist — a Nigerian-born British singer with a Jamaican roots group, which is the diaspora argument in four minutes.

Mereba appears three times, including "Living on a Dream" with Doug E. Fresh, which is the most unexpected pairing here.

Mpho Sebina's "No Evil" and "Loves Light" are the Botswanan discovery, and Xenia Manasseh's "Niambie" is the Kenyan one.

Somi's "Ginger Me Slowly" is the jazz entry — a Rwandan-Ugandan-American singer whose records are closer to Abbey Lincoln than to anything else here.

Les Nubians' "Makeda" is the French-Cameroonian classic, and Sampa the Great's "Energy" is the Zambian-Australian one.

Juls' "Soweto Blues" with Busiswa and Jaz Karis is a reworking of the Miriam Makeba song, and TRESOR and Msaki's "Sondela" is the most beautiful track on the list.

Go deeper

Sona Jobarteh's Fasiya is essential, and Somi's The Lagos Music Salon is the album to hear next.

Sampa the Great's The Return and Mereba's The Jungle Is the Only Way Out are the two contemporary records this volume most clearly recommends.

Why the opening matters: beginning with a kora player and a Sade collaboration rather than a hit tells you the brief immediately. This is a set assembled to be listened to rather than to energise a room, and the two-thirds female ratio across sixty tracks is the other deliberate choice a casual listen would miss.

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