This is one of the best compilations yet to be released by my favorite label, Harmless records. Based in the UK, Harmless is known for releasing quality compilations of rare soul and funk from the ’70s. Make Music is different than the usual Harmless set, a bit more far-reaching than your average funk CD. Made up of songs recorded in the early ’70s, when hippie attitudes and approaches to music were being applied to soul and funk, Make Music capsulates one of the more exciting (but forgotten) periods in modern music. 

Just about every track is great, but standouts for me would be Shuggie Otis’s “Auht Uh Mi Head” (but that’s no surprise, as Shuggie’s Inspiration Information is my favorite album); the Isley Brothers’s “Work to do” (a thousand times better than Vanessa Williams’s better-known remake); “Our lives are shaped by what we love,” by Odyssey; “That’s saying a lot,” by Christine Perfect (trip-hop before there was trip-hop); and Sergio Mendes’s amazing remake of “For What It’s Worth.”

All in all, an excellent sampling of a forgotten strand of music, but I will admit that the CD is overshadowed by the even-better follow-up, As We Travel.