American and African funk cross-pollinated continuously between 1970 and 1975 or so; you’ve heard the American side of the equation if you’ve grown up with black radio, but the African stuff is just starting to get heard widely over here, if mostly by way of European imports. Original Afro-funk recordings have turned into major collectors’ items in the last few years, and where collectors go, reissues surely follow. A few compilations came out a year or so ago, and they mostly seem to have spawned sequels, which is good news. Here’s a round-up of the recent crop.

A continuation of the series that began with Racubah and the awesome Ouelele, Bilongo (Comet) is the most all-over-the-place of the new Afrobeat compilations, but that’s because it focuses on items that don’t fit into any particular niche. Its highlight is the truly sui generis “Je suis un sauvage,” a French single from about 1970 featuring poet Alfred Panou backed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago — neither strictly African (“Africanist,” more like) nor funky in the usual sense, but totally hot. Compiler Manu Boubli mostly selected tracks by total unknowns (Ephraim Nzeka’s disco cover of Fela Kuti’s “Zombie” doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it is), and he leans toward the jazz side of Afrobeat; there are even a few Latin-sounding grooves, like Georges-Éduoard Nouel’s “Meci Bon Dieu.”

Club Africa 2 (Strut) takes the idea of “African funk” pretty loosely: besides Nigerian and South African tracks, it’s got recordings from Belgium, Guadaloupe, France, the UK, the US, and Brazil, mostly from the early ’70s. It’s not all great, but there is no such thing as a bad album that includes Letta Mbulu’s South African deep-soul classic “Mahlalela.” Actually, there’s no such thing as a bad world that includes “Mahlalela.” (You might remember Mbulu as the singer of the theme from Roots; her gorgeous 1970 album Letta is crying out for reissue.) It’s interesting to hear US funk lead the way for its cousins elsewhere — Exile One’s “Funky Crookie” is a product of the French Antilles, but it sounds for all the world like one of the grooves-with-breakdowns that American micro-labels were cranking out by the gross in 1972 or so.

That’s even more obvious on Africa Funk: Return to the Original Sound of 1970s Funky Africa (Harmless), a sequel to a similar disc whose title is identical except for the “return to.” Ice’s “Time Will Tell” is a clavinet funk workout that owes more than a little to the Commodores’ “Machine Gun.” If Ice sound sort of American, that’s because they are, from Long Island, but they moved to the African area of Paris in the early ’70s and so apparently qualify as “funky Africa.” Matata were a Kenyan group who idolized James Brown and his associates: their “I Feel Funky,” from 1974, is copped from the sort of singles Bobby Byrd had been making a year or two earlier. But groove rather than originality is the point here, and besides, we get wonderful oddities like the “Afro-rock” tracks by European groups the Kongas and Vecchio — progressive-rock structures and guitars hybridized with dense African percussion. And right in the middle is Afrobeat overlord Fela Kuti’s 1974 “Roforofo Fight,” 15 minutes of showing ’em how it’s done.

Afrobeat . . . No Go Die! (Shanachie), which collects more-or-less contemporary takes on Afro-funk, has some great stuff, but it also implies that the music began and ended with Fela: besides his son Femi Kuti, his former drummer Tony Allen, and his old band Egypt 80, it’s got a bunch of tracks by American and Nigerian groups whose relationship to Fela runs from “perpetual homage” to “compulsive imitation.” Too often the disc seems a watered-down imitation of Afrobeat’s past glories; if you want to listen to Fela, 20 of his albums were reissued last year, and there’s no reason not to go to the source.

Not that following in Fela’s footsteps is necessarily a bad thing. One of the best Afrobeat bands currently operating, New York’s Antibalas, a gang of about 14 musicians with ties to the Desco funk collective, are unabashed Fela worshippers, but they’re also first-rate musicians who know how to let a groove simmer until it’s time to make it boil. Besides appearing on No Go Die and the new Africa Funk set (where they sound considerably more early-’70s than, for instance, Manu Dibango’s strained 1978 Afro-disco piece “Big Blow” does), they’ve got an album of their own, Liberation Afrobeat (available from their own Afrosound Records, www.antibalas.com). At their frequent New York performances, they’ve run up against their own popularity — there’s often no room to dance. That’s a tribute to their excellence.

American and African funk cross-pollinated continuously between 1970 and 1975 or so; you’ve heard the American side of the equation if you’ve grown up with black radio, but the African stuff is just starting to get heard widely over here, if mostly by way of European imports. Original Afro-funk recordings have turned into major collectors’ items in the last few years, and where collectors go, reissues surely follow. A few compilations came out a year or so ago, and they mostly seem to have spawned sequels, which is good news. Here’s a round-up of the recent crop.

A continuation of the series that began with Racubah and the awesome Ouelele, Bilongo (Comet) is the most all-over-the-place of the new Afrobeat compilations, but that’s because it focuses on items that don’t fit into any particular niche. Its highlight is the truly sui generis “Je suis un sauvage,” a French single from about 1970 featuring poet Alfred Panou backed by the Art Ensemble of Chicago — neither strictly African (“Africanist,” more like) nor funky in the usual sense, but totally hot. Compiler Manu Boubli mostly selected tracks by total unknowns (Ephraim Nzeka’s disco cover of Fela Kuti’s “Zombie” doesn’t sound like a good idea, but it is), and he leans toward the jazz side of Afrobeat; there are even a few Latin-sounding grooves, like Georges-Éduoard Nouel’s “Meci Bon Dieu.”

Club Africa 2 (Strut) takes the idea of “African funk” pretty loosely: besides Nigerian and South African tracks, it’s got recordings from Belgium, Guadaloupe, France, the UK, the US, and Brazil, mostly from the early ’70s. It’s not all great, but there is no such thing as a bad album that includes Letta Mbulu’s South African deep-soul classic “Mahlalela.” Actually, there’s no such thing as a bad world that includes “Mahlalela.” (You might remember Mbulu as the singer of the theme from Roots; her gorgeous 1970 album Letta is crying out for reissue.) It’s interesting to hear US funk lead the way for its cousins elsewhere — Exile One’s “Funky Crookie” is a product of the French Antilles, but it sounds for all the world like one of the grooves-with-breakdowns that American micro-labels were cranking out by the gross in 1972 or so.

That’s even more obvious on Africa Funk: Return to the Original Sound of 1970s Funky Africa (Harmless), a sequel to a similar disc whose title is identical except for the “return to.” Ice’s “Time Will Tell” is a clavinet funk workout that owes more than a little to the Commodores’ “Machine Gun.” If Ice sound sort of American, that’s because they are, from Long Island, but they moved to the African area of Paris in the early ’70s and so apparently qualify as “funky Africa.” Matata were a Kenyan group who idolized James Brown and his associates: their “I Feel Funky,” from 1974, is copped from the sort of singles Bobby Byrd had been making a year or two earlier. But groove rather than originality is the point here, and besides, we get wonderful oddities like the “Afro-rock” tracks by European groups the Kongas and Vecchio — progressive-rock structures and guitars hybridized with dense African percussion. And right in the middle is Afrobeat overlord Fela Kuti’s 1974 “Roforofo Fight,” 15 minutes of showing ’em how it’s done.

Afrobeat . . . No Go Die! (Shanachie), which collects more-or-less contemporary takes on Afro-funk, has some great stuff, but it also implies that the music began and ended with Fela: besides his son Femi Kuti, his former drummer Tony Allen, and his old band Egypt 80, it’s got a bunch of tracks by American and Nigerian groups whose relationship to Fela runs from “perpetual homage” to “compulsive imitation.” Too often the disc seems a watered-down imitation of Afrobeat’s past glories; if you want to listen to Fela, 20 of his albums were reissued last year, and there’s no reason not to go to the source.

Not that following in Fela’s footsteps is necessarily a bad thing. One of the best Afrobeat bands currently operating, New York’s Antibalas, a gang of about 14 musicians with ties to the Desco funk collective, are unabashed Fela worshippers, but they’re also first-rate musicians who know how to let a groove simmer until it’s time to make it boil. Besides appearing on No Go Die and the new Africa Funk set (where they sound considerably more early-’70s than, for instance, Manu Dibango’s strained 1978 Afro-disco piece “Big Blow” does), they’ve got an album of their own, Liberation Afrobeat (available from their own Afrosound Records, www.antibalas.com). At their frequent New York performances, they’ve run up against their own popularity — there’s often no room to dance. That’s a tribute to their excellence.