Suns Of Arqa was one of the earliest acts to mix dub, reggae, Indian music, ambient, and other styles with more modern electronic production, though they did start out as a more traditional dub/reggae act in the late 70's. They may have helped invent downtempo music indirectly, especially once their stuff started getting remixed. I could picture Sphongle being influenced by this band as well, except that SOA didn't keep the BPM too high usually.
I'm a little surprised this group didn't work with Bill Laswell at some point, as he also had a fondness for a lot of the same types of music and loved doing collaborations.
They had a lot of different lineups and collaborators over the years but Michael Wadada was the leader. I just learned yesterday that he had passed away back in late 2021. What's odd is that it wasn't even on the Wikipedia page for the band. I found out about it on Bandcamp because someone referenced it in a recommendation, and then I looked into further. Anyways, a late RIP.
Here are some tracks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrmadezyawk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct06n0JhC_4
There is no knowledge that is not power.
