The Sound of Kinsasha: Guitar Classics from Zaire (1993)

This album is a compilation created by musicologist John Storm Roberts in an effort to trace the evolution of the rumba and to analyze the influence of Cuban rhythms on African folk styles. This collection serves to present an dizzying array of heavy rhythms as well as a primer to some Sub-Saharan popular guitar styles.

Get it here: The Sound of Kinsasha

S.E. Rogie - Palm Wine Guitar Music: The 60's Sound (1988)

The sweet, old West African tradition of palm wine guitar has few great players left. Palm wine music dates back to the days when Portuguese sailors first introduced guitars to West African port cities. Early African guitarists and bottle percussionists played at gatherings where revelers drank the fermented sap of palm trees, a traditional alternative to bottled beer. S. E. Rogie, palm wine music's greatest ambassador, began his career as "The Jimmy Rodgers of Sierra Leone." His early hit "My Sweet Elizabeth" stands as the most popular song Sierra Leone has produced to date. After he left home in 1973, Rogie's long, up-and-down career took him around West Africa, to the US, and ultimately to England, where he recorded, taught, and performed vigorously until his sudden death at the age of 68.
-Afropop.org

Get it here: SE Rogie - Palm Wine Guitar Music

London is the Place For Me Vol. 2 - Calypso Kwela Highlife from Young Black London

(This collection has some of the best album art, period)

"Truth is, there are no standout tracks here. It's all wall to wall magic and beauty and loose-limbed dance rhythms. But Campbell's percussion only "Ashiko Rhythm," a mellow hand drums, thumb piano, and gong-gong workout on the basic shave-and-a-haircut/two-bits beat, and the Rhythm Brothers' delicate and lullaby-like closer "Sing The Blues," can't go by without mention.

Musical value aside, London Is The Place For Me 2 is also an acutely timely reminder of the glory that is London's multicultural mix—something we cannot allow to be destroyed by the psychopathic death cult behind this month's bomb outrages in the city. One love."

-Chris May at All About Jazz (2005)

Get it here: London is the Place For Me Vol. 2