There is a flood of music-by-Africans out now, the best of which I think is Malian Issa Bagayogo’s Tassoumakan (Six Degrees 6570361103-2MJ).  He mixes traditional music of the Sahel with loops, samples, club beats and bluesy-cool Soul to Soul-meets-Bill Withers post-acid jazz in what is the greatest mix of Africa-meets-12^th Avenue since “Soul Makossa.”  I’m hard pressed to think of any world music fan who wouldn’t enjoy this disc  and truly the authentic village music side of things dominates the overall texture so that at first listen it sounds purely African.  Perhaps it is.  To some extent this is uncharted territory—an authentically African approach to club music?  Even Dibango and Kidjo haven’t achieved that yet.  Tassoumakan possess a kind of austere, soulful Malian sincerity, combined with musical mastery and studio wizardry that harks back to the halcyon days of Lee “Scratch” Perry, Bill Laswell, the Talking Heads, Art of Noise and Brian Eno, but doesn’t sound derivative of their work.  I hope club music fans take to it as well, because Bagayogo deserves to make large.  Vocally, he’s a rarity, with a dark, buzzy baritone.  The majority of successful male singers in the world are tenors, but he has created a sound palette that supports his voice perfectly, including giving his female singers plenty of air time to fill out the high end.  One of the biggest challenges for Africans using Western musical ideas yet singing in their own language has been the loss of any unique communication to Westerners.  Paradoxically by internationalizing their approach they often lose any international artistic relevance.  Bagayogo skirts the issue by thoroughly Mali-izing the foreign influences he’s using and has managed it brilliantly.  A top 10 definite—indispensable.