Smooth Africa is an entertaining, perfectly enjoyable CD that brings many wonderful talented and gifted performers to the jazz listeners, and it is a CD that is fresh in concept and delivery! Smooth Africa has a good feel about it that draws the listener in with its beautifully expressed harmonies and soaring sounds. Every musician does an outstanding, memorable job on this CD.

Several of Africa's well-known musicians and other internationally-acclaimed musicians join together to perform, with the CD recorded primarily in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa under the guidance of Heads Up International, Ltd. president Dave Love. It is a gathering well worth every jazz listener's time.

Pianist Joe McBride brings his great gifts to the performances, along with Hugh Masekela on trumpet, steel pan master Andy Narell, and guitarist Jonathan Butler. It is a gathering of musical eagles soaring in new flights of jazz imagination!

The selections are as varied and as exciting as the performances, such as "Soweto," "11 K's To Freedom," "Point Of View," "Meeting of the Women," "Manenberg," "Mpule," "Smooth Africa," " Cape Vibes Got'em?," "Gumba in Durban," "Tazara Express," "When Days Are Dark Friends Are Few," "Lalela." I was hard pressed to find which songs I liked the best because each one is a perfect song for this CD! Each song has a special jazz message with various musicians contributing to the whole picture, making each song performance as unique as individual oil paintings of great beauty and pleasure!

The notes that accompany this CD will give the listener information on each song and the many performers on each song as to name and instrument the performer plays on! These songs will linger in your mind. I close my eyelids and think of the visions that this intriguing CD of African musical expression invokes in a peaceful, graceful, jazzy manner, and songs "Smooth Africa," "Meeting of the Women," and the incredibly powerful "When Days Are Dark Friends Are Few," immediately come into my thoughts! For a change of pace, this collection of contemporary jazz sounds is a most welcome arrival!

Smooth Africa is a wonderful jazz collection to take with you anywhere, anytime! Excellent!