FIVE COUNTRIES. ELEVEN LANGUAGES. TWENTY REASONS TO FALL IN LOVE.

Every one of these tracks meant something to somebody, somewhere, decades ago. A wedding song. A radio moment that never travelled outside the region. A one-pressing-only local legend. Most of them you’ve genuinely never heard before. Once the pressing plants closed, the vinyl ended up boxed away in back rooms and garages – and the world never got the chance. Now it does.

CURATED BY DELE SOSIMI

Former member of Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80, co-founder of Femi Kuti’s Positive Force, and one of the most respected voices in African music today. Four decades performing worldwide, and he remains the foremost ambassador and educator of Afrobeat music. “This music deserves to be heard. These artists poured their souls into these recordings. The fact that the world nearly lost them makes bringing them back all the more important.”

MASTERED BY RICHARD WHITTAKER

Grammy-nominated Dolby Atmos mixer, Director of Starboard Audio, and the ears behind records for The Who, Thin Lizzy and Michael Kiwanuka – he took every single track through his hands. Recordings that were once crackly, warped or barely surviving now sound like they were cut last week. Proper restoration.

WHO WE ARE

Unearthed African Recordings exists to preserve, restore and platform the Pan-African musical heritage of the 1960s-80s – Afrobeat, Highlife, Soukous, Juju, Apala, Benga, Rumba, Makossa and more. We’ve already brought back over 500 albums from West, Central and East Africa, and honestly, we’ve barely scratched the surface. There are thousands more still out there waiting. We’re just getting started. And here’s the bit we care about most: wherever we can, streaming income goes straight to the original artists, their families and their estates – many of whom never got paid properly the first-time round. We work in partnership with the Musical Copyright Society of Nigeria to help make that right. Another core mission is to provide representation for languages and genres that have been overlooked, left behind in the rapid expansion of the digital DSP landscape and, consequently, are heinously underrepresented on the world’s most popular streaming platforms. We’re working in partnership with our distributor Xelon Digital to change that from the inside. The fruits of this work may take years to be fully realised and publicly visible but this has to be addressed now.