King Sunny Ade

The track lengths on a King Sunny Ade album are significant.

At the beginning of his record-making years, in 1967, he led his Green Spot Band in the sweet polyrhythmic Nigerian pop style called juju, and the songs were short.

By the early 1970s, they had stretched out, often up to an LP side. By his last Western-market album, in 2000, the song lengths had reached almost 10 minutes.

Good news: The longest track on the new double-disc album runs past 31 minutes.

The new 16-piece version of his African Beats band recorded it recently in a Pennsylvania studio, with six chorus singers behind Ade's soft lead vocals, two players of the talking drum and the marvelous trap-set drummer Taiwo Sogo Ogunjimi-Oba.

The hand-drumming through the album is light and precise and fixed, with the trap-set drums ebbing and flowing against it, constantly revising its patterns and stress beats.

At age 64, Ade is still a beguiling guitarist.

- Ben Ratliff