The drastic effect of colonization on African nations won’t and probably can’t be fully realized. Obviously, the subjugation of a continent to various European nations can’t be perceived as positive in any way. The rape of the African continent for its resources and its people isn’t going to be explained away be any of the potential ‘civilizing’ tendencies that colonizers may have left behind. The one effect of this process, though, that resulted in something positive – apart from the realization of unity and a culture unique to individual locales – comes through the recorded music of the continent. It’s clearly not a good deal, still, for the colonized, but through the European traffic that’s been so pervasive since the fifteen hundreds, Africans have been privy to hearing Western music that most, otherwise, would not have been able to come across. Again, a paltry trade off, but one that’s yielded endless waves of good music.

Mining some of these recordings is Alan Bishop – of Sun City Girls’ fame. With his Seattle based Sublime Frequencies imprint, Bishop endeavored upon a path of mapping musics from Africa by sending scouts to locate specific performers in and around major cities. The foot work has paid off and yielded at least two ‘new’ stars. Both Omar Souleyman and Group Doueh recently completed a European tour – and the family band that makes up Group Doueh even released a disc to hock for the occasion.

Treeg Salaam, which translates to Streets of Peace, is the follow up to the Doueh family’s Guitar Music From the Western Sahara from a few years back. The title of that first disc might be a bit misleading to folks unfamiliar with Doueh in that, there aren’t acoustic instruments being plied here – instead Doueh plays an electric guitar run through various effects to reach back to his idles – Hendrix and Mr. James Brown – in addition to a four stringed African instrument, tangentially related to the lute. Of course, the offerings on both of the family’s discs traffic in African styles as much if not more than Western sounds – but the approximation of rock guitar winds up getting Group Doueh into garage and kraut territories at times.

Treeg Salaam’s second track, “Ragsa Jaguar,” which was apparently recorded live, comes off as a strangled African progression set into a ‘60s rock context that’s not only immediately rewarding with Doueh launching himself into a frenzy, but also follows a robotic drum cadence contrived from a keyboard. If “Ragsa Jaguar” was the only track the presented such an amalgam of sounds, it’d still be remarkable. But it’s not. And in fact, a good deal of each of these tracks culled from various, older tape recordings, accidentally works in a komische style.

The album’s closer, “Tazit Kalifa,” might be the most difficult to fit into that pigeon hole, but with the droning keys and weaving guitar, the track might be some atmospheric experiment from Et Cetera, or some other similarly minded group. Regardless, it’s a good listen. Consume at will.