While the military-backed regime installed after the 1968 coup that overthrew Keïta encouraged authenticité through traditional African music, Cuban elements persisted in the background in outfits like Bamako's Rail Band, formed by the railway authorities to play near the main station for passengers waiting for their train.
Scheduling issues limited the recording sessions that produced Afrocubism to five days and ruled out lengthy rehearsals, so what's on offer here is drawn from seventeen tracks recorded live in the studio without additional overdubs or any similar frippery.
In the intervening years a number of those who would have been in the original sessions have passed on, and here the personnel are Eliades Ochoa and members of his band Grupo Patria along with original Malian invitees Djelimady Tounkara (guitar) and Bassekou Kouyate (ngoni), and additional African stars in the shape of Toumani Diabate (kora), griot singer Kasse Mady Diabate and Lassana Diabate (balafon).
For the uninitiated kora equates to a cross between a harp and a lute, the griot equates a combination of poet, musician and storyteller who maintains the oral tradition while the balafon equates to a xylophone.
While the material is split roughly fifty-fifty between Africa and Cuba, the predominant vibe is West African, with Cuban nuances added to the African material while the African elements weave their way into Cuban classics like Guantanamera. It's a case of one side playing their own music and the other side figuring out a way to fit in, so it's a genuine fusion of two not quite disparate elements, since there's a strong African influence in Cuban music which was then re-exported back to revolutionary Africa.
Toumani Diabaté claims the writing credit for the opening track, Mali Cuba, loosely based around the familiar Guantanamera with the kora tinkling away as the balafon lays out the melody and Latin brass adds a touch of the Caribbean.
That's followed by Eliades Ochoa on vocals for Al Vaivén De Mi Carreta (The Swaying Of My Cart), the first track actually recorded for the album. Half way through griot Kasse-Mady Diabaté takes over the vocal, and the griot territory continues through Karamo (The Hunter) delivered with a Latin lilt.