Maybe
it's the anticipation of the upcoming World Sacred Music
Festival that has me so juiced about this new offering.
Maybe it's the way Sabbah manages to blend South Asian
devotional music with compelling beats -- using mostly
acoustic instruments. Embracing three sacred traditions
- Hinduism, Sufi Islam, and Sikhism -- the album's eight
tracks are essentially a prayer to devotion itself, in
whatever form it manifests.
"Koi
Bole Ram Ram" is backed by rhythms familiar to bhangra
fans, though here they are
slowed down and form the foundation for the qawwali-esque
voice of Sikh gurbani singer Rana Singh floating aloft
like a dove made of sound. Kirtan singer Anup Jalota
gives voice to the spacious "Jai
Bhavani," an ode to Bhavani
(another form of the Hindu deity Durga).
Sabbah
maintains a consistent feel as the songs drift among
singers (including
Punjabi Master Saleem, Pakistani Riffat Sultana, and
Indian classical vocalist Shubha Mudgal) and spiritual
paths. The
longest on an album of long tracks, the 10-minute dub-driven
"Haun Vaari Haun Varaney" suggests further sacred branching
from India to Jamaica -- rasta-bhakti, anyone?
The
magic of Sabbah is in his ability to create forward-looking
music that is deeply rooted in tradition. No track illustrates
this better than "Kinna Sohna (How
Beautiful Did God Make You?)", a Sufi tune written by
the Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the late qawwali singer and
one of the greatest voices the world has ever heard.
Whether
you're listening for the messages of devotion, or
just for the enveloping sounds that Sabbah weaves,
Devotion is is one of the most consistently compelling
releases of this young year.
©2008
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media
|
Think
of One: Camping Shaabi (Crammed)
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Antwerp-based Think of One are consummate musical
explorers. On their last outing, Trafico, they coaxed the
sounds of Brazil through their globalizing filters. This
time around it's the strains of Moroccan Shaabi that feed
their sound. This Berber wedding music may be less well known
than Algerian Rai, but it's just as full of compelling rhythms
and melodies. And Think of One's version of Shaabi is a right
sturdy kick in the backside. Bits of dub, electronica, rock,
and hip hop compel unconscious head-nodding or outright booty
shaking in even the most collected listeners.
Saba: Jidka
/ The Line (Riverboat)
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Born
in her mother's Somali, Saba has spent most of her life
in her father's Italy. She tells her conflicted, multicultural
tale on her debut CD, Jidka (The Line), itself a multicultural
construction that features artists from Cameroon, Senegal,
and Gabon. But don't start thinking that this is an African
album. It's not...well, not really. It's more pop with
African roots, sung in Somali because "The Somali
language gives me great satisfaction for the musical and
expressionistic sound of the words, but, more than anything
else, for the value this reunion represents in my human
growth. It feels like I'm moving closer to a part of me
that lives in the woman that gave me life: my mother."
Famoro
Dioubate's Kakande: Dununya (Jumbie)
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Between West African and New York City lies
a bit of ocean. But judging by the health of the African
music scene in the USA, that's a minor obstacle. Back in
2002, Smithsonian Folkways released a compilation called
Badenya: Manden Jaliya in New York City. Among the artists
featured on that disc are some names that should now be familiar
to Spin The Globe listeners, among them Malian kora virtuoso
Mamadou Diabate and Fulani flute master Bailo Bah. With this
strong debut album, Famoro Dioubate and his group Kakande
are likely to be the latest additions to that list.
Born
into a griot family in Guinea, Dioubate is also known for
his work (along with Bah) in the group
Fula Flute. Kakande
combines a couple of players from that group (bassist Peter
Fand, tambin flute player Sylvain Leroux), with Avram
Fefer (sax), Raul Rothblatt (cello), Mamady Kouyate (electric
guitar), and percussionists Brian Glashow and Reuven Weizburg.
Despite
the multicultural makeup of the band and the instrumentation,
I hear deep traditional roots in the music, in which the
balafon is most often central and other instruments play
supporting (often circular) lines. It's the simple yet
sophisticated music I imagine hearing in a West African
village after the
sun has gone down and the day's work is done. Okay, it
happens to be a village with a well-rehearsed group of
tight professional musicians, but you know what I'm saying.
The
meanings of the eleven tracks, sung in Susu and Malinke,
are briefly
described in the liner notes: praise songs, love songs,
even a tale of love between a girl and a magical hippopotamus
("Mali Sadjo")! Magic
or not, this music is much easier to love than a hippo.
And far better for dancing.
©2008
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media |
