Consumer Guide Album

Ali Hassan Kuban: From Nubia to Cairo [Shanachie, 1991]
Candidly commercial if not cockeyed drunk, a veteran entertainer from the melanin-rich upriver highlands leads a thoroughly modern band that favors the same stop-and-go tricks polka strategists love so. His horn players live for their solo features, and that's not to mention his accordionists--or his bagpipers. And throbbing and clattering incessantly behind, what else? The drums, the drums, the drums, the electric bass. A−