1. Sam Mangwana (Congo) - Londende - 4:06
Sam Mangwana is one of the inventors of soukous (pronounced "soo-koo") music, similar in basic style to Caribbean rumba but more energetic. He strives for "an Africa without guns, where democracy will not be submitted to the rise and fall of the dollar". This quote is from The Leopard Man's African Music Guide, which has more information about him and about some 90 other African musicians.

2. Sam Mangwana (Congo) - Reveille-toi Afrique - 4:27
A wake up call for Africa. For more about Sam, see the track notes just above.

3. Diogal (Senegal) - Ya Fatoumata - 4:31
Diogal (pronounced "JOH-gall") is from a fishing family in Dakar, the capital of Senegal. His music is bright and light but very hard to find. For more information about him - but unfortunately nothing about what this song means - see his excellent website.

4. Adam Solomon (Kenya) - Mwajuma - 6:30
Music from "the Fiesta guitar of Professor Adam Solomon", who is one the loosely grouped musicians known as the African Guitar Summit. This rumba-rhythm song in Swahili is about a boy walking to buy breakfast pastries. Along the way he greets a family seated in front of their house, in particular their young daughter, but she only insults him in response. Where will this lead?

5. Habib Koite (Mali) - Batoumambe - 4:11
Batoumambe is a woman of a fishing tribe of Mali. She is loved by a man of another tribe. But, being of different tribes, they can never be married. He says, "If I put my hand around your neck, it is not out of desire but out of love for the owner of the neck." Their impossible romance inspired the Malian proverb, "Not all love ends in marriage."

6. Habib Koite (Mali) - Sambara - 4:17
Sambara means shoe. "Arriving at the main market in Bamako [capital of Mali], I found the blues shoes of my life." The young musicians wanted intensely to borrow them, but I never loaned them and never borrowed theirs. "Sambara nitigui" is a Malian expression that means literally "little shoes" and refers to certain people's desire to uncover and dissipate your inner knowledge and experience to the world at large.

7. Afrigo Band (Uganda) - Mfunda Nomubi - 2:45
From the preeminent Ugandan band of the last 20 years or more. Their albums are very difficult to find. See the track notes just below.

8. Afrigo Band (Uganda) - Emeere Esiridde - 6:47
Sung in Luganda, the most-spoken Bantu language in Uganda (English is Uganda's official language). Here is part of a wonderful review on Amazon.com of this band's very-hard-to-find album Afrigo Batuuse 2: "Afrigo is Uganda. Steamed matooke [banana] in banana leaf with a big Nile Special [beer], the red clay, waragi [banana whisky] at home with the elders, the most beautiful women in the world, the lake flies swarming around Lake Victoria ... just as Lucky Dube has taken on the Caribbean reggae beat and brought it home to Africa, Afrigo has brought the four-step rumba back to the Rift Valley, where Man first made music ... there is nothing like Uganda, there is nothing like Afrigo. Get ready to rumba." I have not been able to find out the meaning of the title.

9. Oliver Mtukudzi (Zimbabwe) - Hazvireve - 5:53
Oliver Mtukudzi is known and loved in his native Zimbabwe as "Tuku". He has sung with Bonnie Raitt, who featured his song "Help me Lord" on one of her CDs from the 1990s. In this song a father is talking to his child whom he has never met. He and the child's mother were barely more than children and had parted ways when he heard that she was pregnant. Though they have seen each other since, the mother will not tell him where the child is. The father loves the child and deeply wants to express that love across the chasm between them.

10. King Sunny Ade (Nigeria) - Ogidan O Ni Se Barber - 7:11
King Sunny Adé (pronounced ah-DAY) is known as the "King of Juju", a musical style that originated in Nigeria in the 1930s. There is much more information here. This song is about finding your path in life, comparing people with leopards (ogidan).