1973 Mor Thiam “Dini Safarrar (Drums Of Fire)” on RITE

For an embarrassing percentage of the twenty years I’ve been after this banger, I thought the dude’s name was Dini Saffrar. But of course, that means “Drums Of Fire” in tribal dialect, and it’s actually the Senegalese percussionist Mor Thiam who is the namesake of this wonderful record, although his full name isn’t actually on the cover. Or at least the front of it. And since finding this in the wild back in the day was scratcher-ticket unlikely, it wasn’t easy to get the real scoop. There’s also some serious players in the lineup I had no clue were part of the groove, including avant alto hero Oliver Lake, Charles Wesley “Bobo” Shaw Jr., and production by the mighty Oliver Sain. Phillip Westmoreland, who toured with Curtis Mayfield and was on Sain’s “Bus Stop” plays a very slick mixture of bluesy funk and avant guitar, and even Billy Ingram, who is on that DEEPLY weird Lord Luther “I Am The Lord” record, which you can get as a UK ACE comp, hits hard behind the kit. Even Art Ensemble’s (and a bit of Ra) Lester Bowie shows up to toot a bit of trumpet. Even stranger, all this action comes to us straight out of Ohio. Yup, that’s not a city a hundred miles south of Dakar, it’s a swing state in the midwest. Even more bizarre, after all that time langouring on the want list, I finally scored a copy yesterday in an in-person trade! Whew. As always with vinyl, everything comes around (unless it doesn’t) and most things go around (they always do). But what do these Fire Drums sound like? Killer indigenous spiritual boogie groove that every once in a while veers into HEAVY free blowing madness. Which is to say, it’s perfect. Oh yes.