JONI HAASTRUP

Wake Up Your Mind was released in 1978, the year after FESTAC, so it's unsurprising that it finds in a pan-Africanist mood. In the music,one can hear echoes of Stevie Wonder, Kool & the Gang, Mighty Sparrow and even KC & the Sunshine Band's Bahamian junkanoo-inspired disco, as the lyrics exhort the unity of the African disapora. The album is definitely designed for maximum crossover effect, but Haastrup has never been
shy about his ambitions to transcend theconventional ideas of what an African musician should sound like

"[We need to] show the African musician as an artist first, then as an African... We can be pop, we can be rock, we can be jazz, we can be
soul, we can be everything because in actual fact we have [made] an incredible contribution
to all of that already. So why deny ourselves, or why deny us, the opportunity to cross over into the commercial industry."