Consumer Guide Album

Think Global: Women of Africa [World Music Network, 2007]
The de facto fantasy is that an entire continent, from South Africa to the Western Sahara, is in some crucial respect a single place. The styles don't mesh, of course. But the voices do, stronger in timbral solidarity here than when carrying their own full-lengths. Crowned queens--Oumou Sangare, Miriam Makeba closing with the inevitable "Pata Pata"--are outdone by such sisters as South Africa's Busi Mhlongo and Somalia's Setona, both of whom have full-lengths that are now on my to-do list. B+