WOYAYA

Building impressively on the successes of their first album, Osibisa's Woyaya combines killer guitar playing in a classic rock or fusion mould (as on Y Sharp or Spirits Up Above) or delicate, gentle flute (as on Beautiful Seven) with the African rhythms of the band's legendary percussion section to create a true piece of world music, showing as it does the influence of three continents. There's even a bit of funk that works its way in on Survival and Y Sharp. The music is so wonderfully upbeat and cheerful that it's impossible not to say that the album fulfils the previous album's mission declaration of "criss-cross rhythms that explode in happiness". A very worthy addition to the band's discography.