Credit to Permanent Records in Highland Park for spinning a track from this album while I was in there last year (the one on the north side of York -- still don't understand why they have two stores there). While their first two albums were just recently re-issued by Analog Africa, the Dur-Dur band was once the premier act of late 80's Mogadishu, Somalia, playing a unique brand of incredibly catchy and fiery funk just before the country fell apart. It definitely casts the vitality of the music in a somewhat tragic light. Somalia is a place I've only known of in the continuing aftermath of it's civil war, but here there's such an exuberant celebration of life. From what I've read, members of the band ended up fleeing to Ethiopia and other countries, effectively ending the band. The founders now live in Ohio.
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