| World
Music CD Reviews, September 2005 |
| |
|
|
VARIOUS
ARTISTS: AFRICA
BAABA MAAL
Palm World Voices
/ Palm Pictures
AFRICA:
buy/hear samples
BAABA MAAL: buy/hear samples
|
In
July, Spin the Globe expressed mixed feelings about the
first Palm World Voices release: Vedic
Path India. I'm glad to report that these next installments
in the multimedia series are vast improvements, though
a few rough edges remain. Both include a spiffy
fold-out National Geographic map chock full of photos,
graphics, and info, along with a thick booklet of photos
and info, the DVD, and the audio CD.
As
you might expect,
Africa is chock full of great music.
The map is rich in detail (though
it's odd to have images of artists whose music is not
included in the project: Gigi, Fela Kuti, Orchestra
Baobab). The DVD is more varied, showing Africans playing,
fishing, dancing, welding, farming, and just lounging
around the city in the cool of the evening. Some tracks
show a coordination between the music and the images.
Particularly powerful is the section showing African
women from Uganda, Ethiopia, and Senegal to the sound
of Baaba Maal's "African Woman." One notices that the
video is more wide-ranging than the audio; you may see
residents of Kenya, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Mozambique,
but oddly the musical range is limited to central and
western Africa. The lone exception is the late Brenda
Fassie of South Africa. Nothing else from southern Africa,
and nothing at all from East Africa. Tut. The good news
is the great music from Oumou
Sangare, Sunny Ade, Ray Lema, and others. Too bad there's
not a page in the booklet giving at least a brief bio
of each artist, their country/nation, and their importance
to African music. Finally,
Africa needed a proofreader. The DVD track listing
is out of order, and the booklet describes the balafon
as "an 18 to 21 string wooden xylophone..."! Hello?!? While
accessible and strong enough to be a great introduction
to Africa, just a little more geographic diversity and
attention to detail could have made this compilation
truly excellent.
Baaba
Maal has two advantages over India and Africa:
focus and narration. Instead of giving an impression of
a vast land full of varied people and musics, we get the
story of one world-famous singer, in his own words and
those of narrator/writer/director Robin Denselow. The
DVD is smoothly edited, and gives satisfying musical segments
along with
bits of
Maal's life at home in the 40-minute biographical film.
Particularly interesting is a long road/canoe journey to
Mauritania
for a concert.
The DVD also contains three tracks (totaling about 30 minutes)
of Baaba Maal in concert at the Royal Festival Hall. The
richly detailed companion map focuses on Senegal's history,
geography, culture, and music. I've got to harp on
details again:
the booklet repeats the
"18
to 21 string wooden xylophone..." spiel, while the
mapmakers, bless their cartographic hearts, insist that
the balafon has, in fact, "12 to 21 hardwood keys." Otherwise
the booklet is fabulous, with a history, selected discography,
photos, bits on Senegalese music and culture, and more,
including transcriptions from interview segments
on the DVD. The 11-track CD is a fine introduction to Baaba
Maal's recent work (spanning 1992-2001). World music fans
will delight in this third Palm World Voices
release,
easily the most
focused and strongest of the series so far.
Sample
videos (quicktime format) from palmworldvoices.com:
"Hamady Boiro" Baaba Maal
"Yala"
Oumou Sangare
©2005
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media
|
|
|
FEMI
KUTI: LIVE AT THE SHRINE (CD & DVD)
Palm Pictures
artist
site : buy
DVD/CD & hear samples
|
If
the fingerprints of Fela Anikulapo Kuti are found on much
"world music" today, it's doubly true for Nigerian
music. His son Femi must have had moments of doubt about
inheriting
the role of political critic, social worker, and prophet.
But no such doubts surface in the course of this DVD, which
tracks Femi at home and at work in Ikeja, on the outskirts
of Lagos.
Just
down the road from his father's famous Shrine, Femi has
converted an old warehouse into a combination
home, social center, and nightclub. During the week,
locals flock to see the band rehearsals, which are open
(there's
even voting on the concert set lists). And every Sunday
night, the new Africa Shrine erupts as hundreds of Nigerians
and visitors blow off the accumulated week's steam. The
DVD looks at many of the Shrine's players, including
fans, security, and the band. It's Femi who drives this
bus,
though, and you see why when he's talking about his role
for the community and for Nigerian more broadly. He doesn't
flinch at the contradiction between his fiercely pro-democracy
songs and the fans who would coronate him as a prophet-king.
Femi
chastises the crowd for loving sex and drink too much,
then launches into "Shotan" - its musically
ferocity echoed by the beer and white plastic chairs
flying over the audience. On stage his voice and persona
are sometimes
laid back. Then suddenly he appears possessed by some
ancestral spirit, his face and body contorted, his eyes
wild. The DVD comes with a companion 14-track CD with
much
of the same music as the DVD.
If you want to understand Femi - or
Fela or Nigerian politics for that matter - this DVD
may be the next best thing
to being
there - and you're less likely to be hit by a plastic
chair.
©2005
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media
|
|
|
AMADOU & MARIAM: DIMANCHE
A BAMAKO
Nonesuch
buy
CD/hear samples
|
Malian
music is hot - from the Festival in the Desert to the urban
sounds of Bamako. But some of the hottest music is also
the coolest, like the laid-back guitar vibe of Tinariwen.
And right on their heels are the blind couple Amadou and
Mariam, with their fourth release. While it features the
same great Malian blues, there's a twist. This CD is the
result of a collaboration between the couple and global
music icon Manu Chao, who produced and contributed to the
music. His influence is unmistakable on tracks like "La
Realite," which includes the kind of sound/music programming
featured on his own albums, and he does vocal duties on "Taxi
Bamako" and "Senegal Fast Food." Throughout
the CD, Chao's touch gives a more accessible, sound, particularly
to newby ears that might find Malian music overly repetitive.
He initiated this project after hearing an Amadou & Mariam
song on his car radio. "I rushed out and bought all
their CDs," Chao says in a Radio France Internationale
interview. "Every day I'd put their records on at
home and when I started singing along, I'd add to them.
... It became a little game I played every day." The
CD would be enhanced by including English translations
(or even summaries) of the French lyrics. But that's a
small complaint about an excellent album. Dimanche
a Bamako (Sundays in Bamako) oozes a laid-back
musical sophistication that will draw in many who don't
think they like world music.
©2005
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media
|
THIS
JUST IN! ... New World Music CD Releases
|
BANTU
FEAT. AYUBA: FUJI SATISFACTION-SOUNDCLASH IN LAGOS (Piranha)
Buy
CD - hear
samples
It
seems so obvious. Nigerian Fuji music is a return to the
vocals and rhythms of traditional Yoruba roots. Hiphop
is
similiarly stripped-down beats and chants. Why a happy
marriage between the two took so long is a mystery, but
Adé Bantu
and Adewale Ayuba have joined them and you can expect
to see little Fujihop offspring any day now. And this
is a
great CD to seduce your hiphop-loving friends into trying
out African
music.
Born
in Lagos and living in Cologne, Bantu has a deep understanding
of both Nigerian and Western
musical cultures.
Over the
bubbling Fuji drums he superimposes not only rapping,
but also reggae
and Afrobeat touches. The result is a soundtrack for
modern Africa, and Bantu stands out as an innovator
amid the masses
of African imitators of Western hiphop.
Bantu comments "Hiphop culture has reached a turning
point, it has lots its values and OD'd on its own supply
of negativity.
Where do we go from here?" Fuji Satisfaction points
the way.
NAMASTE
FLOWERING: COMPILED BY DJ ALOK IBIZA (Blue
Flame)
buy
CD/hear samples
Somewhere
out in the ocean, every Wednesday night, there's a world
music party going on. And this is the soundtrack. The third
in a series of Namaste compilation CDs, this album presumably
reflects the kind of music heard while hanging in the "Trance
Temple" at the Ibiza club where the dinner/party/dance/experience
takes place. Artists include Oi Va Voi, Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan, Mari Boine, and others. A satisfyingly chillin' take
on world music.
AMADOU
BALAKE: TAXIMEN (Popular African Music)
buy CD/hear samples
Hailing
from the Ivory Coast, Amadou Balake is little known in
the rest of the world. But following his appearance on
Africando's Martina and the Golden Afrique compilation,
Balake takes center stage on his own with this CD. The
music on Taximen will put you in the mind of soukous,
with catchy guitars, call-and-response vocals, and a persistent
dance beat. Brief notes hint at song meanings, from the
title track ("the taxidrivers in abidjan are not nice at
all") to "Soun Grouba (the whore)": ("a whore causes diseases
and problems but you should understand that she does not
necessarily do this job by her free will."). The songs
were all originally released on Sacodis International,
the Abidjan-based
label
of Aboudou
Lassissi.
GABY
LITA BEMBO & ORCHESTRE STUKAS DU ZAIRE: KITA
MATA ABC (RetroAfric')
buy CD/hear samples
Classic
African music from Gaby Lita Bembo, a great musical figure
in Zaire (now Congo) in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
This album samples
the
hits he achieved along with his band Stukas du Zaire between
1974 and 1983. Apparently quite a showman on TV, and he's
not a shabby singer either.
The CD insert lacks track notes/lyrics, but includes
a great brief history of Bembo and the band.
HORACE
X: STRATEGY (Omnium)
artist site : buy CD/hear samples
Since
Horace X's last album Sackbutt (see
May 2003 review) I have waited to no avail to see them
live. Placating my hunger, at least a bit, comes this new
CD. A little less dayglo, and somewhat less wonderfully
startling to my ears, Strategy nonetheless contains the
essential Horace X elements: high energy, rapid-fire Jamaican-style
vocals, and a wall of dance-beat sounds made by acoustic
instruments. My affection for this band stems from the
latter: particularly Hazel Fairbairn's fiddling and Pete
Newman's reeds along with Simon Twitchin's irrepressible
vocals, Fabian Bonner's bass, and Mark Russell's drums
(and, as the credits note, "everything else"). "She Want"
is the most fun song about sex in recent memory. Much of
the rest of the album is pleasantly buoyant, if not as
groundbreaking as Sackbutt.
The standout tune is the title track, "Strategy," on which
the band lays
out some positive
philosophy: "Earth can be a paradise if we realy desire
/ ... we need de wisdom an compassion an humility / ..
so to help each other that could be our strategy." While
I still crave a live show, this track along will keep me
going for a while yet.
Bonus:
here's a free mp3 of the song "Wicked
and..." from Horace
X Live at the Junction.
JIMI
M'BAYE: YAYE DIGALMA (Studio Dogo)
artist
site : buy CD/hear samples
I'll
admit my limitations right up front: my advance copy of
the second album from the lead guitarist/arranger of Youssou
N'Dour's Super Etoile Band includes no song title translations
or lyrics or notes, just the
CD,
the
song
names, and M'baye's
face on the cover. In a sense, it's a pure listening experience
- just my ears and the music. And the music speaks well
of itself. Talking drums and electric guitars up front,
catchy melodies, and M'baye's smooth voice atop rich arrangements.
N'Dour fans will eat this up, and the music isn't a
cheap knockoff of his sound. I particularly like the tracks
"Jankh Ndaw" and "Yaral Ma" and I'll let you know if I
find out what they're about. M'baye does sing in English
on a few tracks, and the album concludes with a cover of
Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up," though this is vocally
the weakest track on the album. Aside from that, Yaye
Digalma is a rewarding album
with great Afropop appeal. And eight years after his debut
Dakar Heart, it's about time!
VARIOUS
ARTISTS: WOMEN CARE (KKV)
buy CD/hear samples
Norway
meets Africa in this feel-good compilation of music by
women, for women, in the name of CARE
Norway. Four women from the north (Unni Wilhelmsen,
Lynni Treekrem, Simone, Anneli Drecker) meet four women
from the south (Talike, Tigist Bekele, Chiwonoso, and Marie
Daulne) and make sweet, empowering music together.
Some of the lyrics (at least the English ones) may be a
tad
sappy,
but they're
sincere.
And several
tracks
-- particularly the ones featuring Zap Mama's Daulne
-- are real winners. The magical glue of Anania Ngoriga's
kalimba holds together some of the less charismatic songs.
While not as emotionally engaging as KKV's earlier Lullabies
from the Axis of Evil, Women CARE is good music for a good
cause.
©2005
Scott Allan Stevens, Earball Media |
YET
MORE NEW WORLD MUSIC RELEASES:
|
click
title for CD/artist info
|
|
