Many devoted vinyl-heads to this day disdain the ascendance of The Compact Disc. Though I’ll admit I was hesitant at first, in the words of the bard Neil Diamond, I’m a believer. Especially since a lot of music that’s been out of circulation forever is again seeing the light of day, being reissued in snazzy remastered sound, sometime in 2-LPs-on-1-CD packages. Take this one, for example - if the late bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik (1927-1993) is remembered today at all, it’s for his stints with Thelonious Monk and Herbie Mann. But he put out two fine albums in the early 1960s that were among the earliest excursions in combining jazz and what is now commonly referred to as "world music." Back then, it was simply referred to as Middle Eastern, Caribbean and African Highlife music [respectively] - on these two albums (which I’m sure went right into the cut-out bins by 1964), Abdul-Malik (born in Brooklyn of Sudanese descent) mixed elements of those folk sources with pensive, low-key bebop (that swung). With the "gift" of hindsight, I’m sure the two Long-Play albums assembled herein are likely to find a more receptive audience these days - the ebullient "Hannibal’s Carnivals" sounds a bit like the plaintive Township jazz of Abdullah Ibrahim (once known as Dollar Brand, btw), as does "Wakida Hena," albeit the latter has more of the Highlife groove going on. There’s some fine soloists here, mostly lesser-knowns, the best-known being: the trumpets of Richard Williams (ooh, fine) and Tommy Turrentine, the oft-recorded yet underrated cellist Calo Scott, and though he’s comparatively "subdued" in this context, one of these albums features the drumming of future Cecil Taylor/Oliver Lake collaborator Andrew Cyrille. By today’s standards, these albums [The Music of.... /Sounds of Africa] might sound a little tame compared to the subsequent world music wallops offered us by Jon Hassell, Fela Kuti and Don Cherry, but Mr. A. A-M. was one of the ones who were there first, and his groovin’ proto-world/bop fusion(s) deserve some belated appreciation. (Besides, this stuff is easy on the ear.... most enjoyable.)