The all-female Les Amazones d’Afrique have a message about the often painfully unfair status of women in their home countries of West Africa. Language barriers will limit the reach of their words, but not their music. One of the more successful Afrobeat recordings of recent years, République Amazone features razor-sharp production that honors African choral traditions while plugging the rousing harmonies into snappy beats, funky guitar licks and, at times, even an echo of the Middle East brought long ago to the African coast by Arab traders.
