Steve Reid refers to the tunes on Daxaar as “just regular groovy, happy music.” While they’re most definitely “groovy” and “happy,” it’s unfortunate that adventurous, invigoratingly funky and accessible tracks such as these are far from commonplace. Percussionist Reid, along with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) and keyboardist Boris Netsvetaev, showed up in Senegal and set about recording jam sessions with local musicians. From those jams comes Daxaar, a sublimely African record that, interestingly enough, very rarely directly quotes the African sounds Western audiences are accustomed to. Aside from the opening kora-and-voice track (“Welcome”), Daxaar’s lengthy jams are notably geography-free. Instead, Reid & Co. evoke an esoteric, circular take on Afrobeat; by taking it back to Africa—and bringing a laptop with them—all the diasporic vibe that comes from these jazzy, funky numbers is morphed into a contemporary sound that never resorts to fiddling with outdated notions of “authenticity.” Groovy? Yes. Happy? Absolutely. Regular? No way.