DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER

How ‘up’ are you on your modern jazz divas? Me neither, so I wouldn’t blame you if the thought of American singer Dee Dee Bridgewater getting in touch with her 'roots' by dabbling in the music of West Africa prompts no more than a sceptical “oh yeah?”.
But forget such cynicism, the album (Red Earth – a Malian Journey) features a stellar list of guests from the world-class end of the musical spectrum and an immersive approach to recording that finds Bridgewater weaving her impressive jazz phrasing around a number of griot songs and those chosen from the repertoires of her distinguished Malian guests (Oumou Sangaré, Kassé Mady Diabaté, Tata Bambo Kouyaté and Bassekou Kouyaté all feature).
The album was recorded at the legendary Bogolan studios in Bamako and arranged (both musically, and in terms of personnel) by Cheick Tidiane Seck. "I'm an ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, and I've been out to Africa a few times. I always keep my ears open to the music there, and Mali really stood out“, explains a jolly-but-jetlagged-sounding Dee Dee Bridgewater on the phone from Los Angeles. "I first heard Cheick Seck on a Hank Jones album, and as soon as I decided to record an album with Malian musicians, I thought of him. So we got in touch with his manager, and he got the ball rolling with all these great artists."
I wonder if Dee Dee has any identifiable lineage back to Mali? "No, and I would not claim that, but when I first arrived in Bamako with the river Niger there in front of me and the red earth below, I felt a connection, I felt I was home. Later, when I was speaking to my mother about it, she said 'of course there’s a connection, you've always loved red earth - even when you were a baby in Memphis you would roll around in the red dirt there', so it all feels quite natural."
Natural or not, the musical results feel organic enough to this listener, although years of nestling ever further into the ‘not having to bother trying to understand the words’ comfort zone makes the sudden arrival of English lyrics into this particular idiom something of an aural jolt initially. But the trouble Bridgewater has taken to remain faithful to each song's original theme becomes ever more apparent as ears are tuned in.
Dee Dee: “I guess you would call them loose translations. Cheick translated the original words, and I would adapt them to make sure they made sense in terms of lyrics. Sometimes it’s almost a word for word translation, others there’s more of an ad-libbed approach. I think there's a similarity to jazz in many of the songs chosen, with the social resonance, the emotion and defiance of them.”
That’s a good description of Tata Bambo Kouyaté’s classic Bambo (No More), a song relating Malian women’s fight against forced marriages. Mention of the call-and-response duet between the two produces a crackle of admiration that fizzes down 5000-plus miles of phone line. “The stature of that woman - amazing! You know, women are changing things in Mali, men no longer dictate the rules. With Tata leading the way, what chance have they got! And for her to open up the subject of forced marriages with the Government - it shows the power she has.”
That song is delivered in Dee Dee's standard soulful tone, which contrasts well with Tata Bambo’s strident blues. On the Bassekou Kouyaté song, Demissènw (Children Go 'Round), Bridgewater really lets herself go, belting out a vibrant, gospel-edged blues over a performance which perfectly captures the live sound of Kouyaté’s thrilling ngoni quartet.
“That was the only track on the album that was recorded live. We started to work together with a different, more modern set-up, but with Bassekou’s acoustic band, Ngoni Ba, the whole thing just took off.”
A call to Bassekou Kouyaté confirms the mutual respect between the performers. “When we started rehearsing, Dee Dee immediately became part of my family: she is my sister, she even looks very Malian,” he enthuses. “I love the album - it is of excellent quality musically, and this is a really positive way to approach African music, by involving it with experiments with jazz, an expression that has African music at its roots. Everyone who took part feels very positive about the collaboration and will be glad to work with her in future. For me, I know it is just the start of a very fruitful collaboration, and I hope she will come back and do further albums with Ngoni Ba.”
"Yes, I may have another album coming with Bassekou," confirms Dee Dee, "He is writing the songs at the moment, and we'll maybe add even more traditional instruments like the bolon.” Meanwhile, Dee Dee has been touring Red Earth with some of the lesser-known (but still impressive) names that feature on the album (Mamani Keita and Baba Sissoko amongst them), with the possibility of a visit to the UK early in 2008. So, this is some commitment to the music of West Africa, and its relationship to American jazz and blues. I suggest to Dee Dee that there must be an element of indulgence on the part of her record company Universal, given the time she is spending in what is very much a specialist genre. “Oh, I have been producing myself since 1993 - I do whatever I please, I cannot have a record company dictating what I do. I'm a 21st Century girl!”

This feature first appeared in fRoots magazine.

MASSUKOS

A pop band that uses music to spread a message promoting clean water, decent sanitation and Aids-awareness must be filed under the heading “worthy but dull”, right? Not so in the case of Massukos, the exuberantly catchy force for good and uplifting musical torch bearer for one of the poorest parts of Africa. Situated in the north of the country, Niassa is Mozambique's most sparsely populated province, with a population of about one million spread over an area roughly the size of England. For many years, it has also been the poorest, ravaged by civil war, Aids and water sanitation problems.
Enter one Feliciano dos Santos, a journalist working for Radio Mozambique in the early ‘90s, reporting on the country's attempts to get back on its feet as peace took tentative hold in the region. Feliciano: "We were producing programmes that talked about social problems, water sanitation, that kind of thing. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to get more involved in what we were reporting about."
In dos Santos’s world - where he has spent most of his life dealing with the physical constraints caused by a childhood bout of polio - practicalities are addressed head on, so involvement led to the founding of the Estamos NGO in 1996, where he set about introducing an integrated water supply and improved sanitation, as well as home-based care for people with HIV.
“I’d say about 80% of my time is spent on Estamos projects. As director of Estamos I’m busy working in the office most of the time, planning and running projects. Then we go out and use music at the time we want to spread the message. The rest of the band members also work for Estamos or on other social programmes."
The medium for the message is a sunny, effervescent guitar-based music, a kind of soulful, socially-conscious equivalent of Zimabwe's Bhundu Boys, augmented by keyboards and with a dance-friendly rhythm based on the traditional music of the Niassa area. "When the civil war finished [in 1992], we wondered how we could celebrate people's feeling of relief at surviving, and their return from Malawi and Tanzania where they had been refugees. So, we decided we needed to record our culture, to get our traditional sound back, putting it with electronic instruments to give it the power to get our message across.”
Massukos was formed in 1994, and after becoming popular in Niassa, they recorded their first album, Kuimba kwa Massuko in Maputo in 2002. “That was because there were no decent studios in Niassa," explains dos Santos. "And despite travelling 2,000 kilometres to record the album, we didn't realise our music would be so popular, we were not even fully professional. But the album spread all over Mozambique - it just took off like crazy, and now we’re one of the best-selling bands in the country."
In 2004, British musician Dean Brodrick’s band Empty Boat toured Africa as part of Poo Productions, a London-based media company dedicated to promoting clean water in Africa. Feliciano: “The Empty Boat project came to Niassa, and we worked really well together. Dean suggested that we record an album in the UK, with him as co-producer. There is good recording quality in some studios in Maputo,” explains dos Santos, “but in London we found acoustics to fit the more universal sound that we were looking for.” Anybody who witnessed the breezy performance by Massukos at this year’s mud-caked WOMAD festival at Charlton Park will find the resultant album, the aptly-titled Bubbling, to be a satisfyingly upbeat reflection of the band’s appealing live sound, with added funky brass interjections by Brodrick’s jazz musician friends Harry Beckett and Steve Buckley.
I wonder how Massukos reconcile their resolutely cheery approach with the serious subject matter of the songs. "Sometimes a message is too shocking for people to take in at first,” he replies. “We are talking about serious social themes, but we invite people to dance first, we try to win people over to the music, then they'll get the message later. Plus, there are more than twenty languages in Mozambique, so we have to communicate first through the music!"
And with something over 80,000 copies of Bubbling already sold in their native country, Massukos are clearly communicating very successfully, inevitably attracting the interest of politicians and other public figures (such as Gordon Brown and Sir Bob Geldof) who are keen to be seen showing an interest in Africans’ welfare. Feliciano remains admirably diplomatic about such image-enhancing meetings. “The people we meet are generally open and willing to hear the issues we have, and what we do about them. But I can’t do anything else but just tell them the way things are and what we are doing about it - it's up to them to decide what they do next.” Welcome to the new, pragmatic face of African activism...with guitars.

This feature first appeared in fRoots magazine.

HABIB KOITE - Afriki (Cumbancha)

Singer and guitarist Habib Koité plays a superior blend of smooth, melodic pan-Malian music that has arguably been a mite too restrained on previous albums compared to his live performances, and his voice - although a perfectly fine instrument - can lack the emotional depth of many of his famed countrymen.
But there's a real sense of progress about his carefully-crafted new album Afriki, with an extra rhythmic and traditional instrumental edge to most songs, and the addition of female backing harmonies to set off Koité's smooth vocals. Liberal use of balafon, ngoni, djembé drum and other traditional percussive instruments provide a grit to songs which might in the past have been smoothed out by Western arrangements.
Barra works particularly well, possessing a rolling Mande groove and the melancholy tone of sokou (traditional violin) playing by the late Hassey Sarré. Nta Dima takes the traditional approach even further through the entrancing, other-worldly sound of five antelope horns, rudimentary percussion and call and response vocals. All this plus Koité's famed guitar playing, a sing-song blend of African and Western acoustic pop/rock music with a strength of melody and rhythmic purpose which means that the result is rarely as bland as that description might sound, in particular when Koité dances around the rockier moments from the rhythm section. The delightful Massaké is one such example, a track which also benefits from some joyful vocal interplay between Koité and his backing singers. There are a number of tracks where Koité reverts to a straight, Westernised African sound, but even these usually work well, the title track being the only time when the album retreats too far into the safe territory of pleasant but all too generic Afropean pop. Overall, though, Afriki has the makings of being the album that sees Habib Koité break further into the top division of roots-based Malian music.

www.cumbancha.com
www.habibkoite.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.

HABIB KOITE

Go anywhere in Mali and people will fall over themselves to tell you how great Habib Koite is. Whether on guitar, flute, vocals or one of the seemingly hundreds of other instruments he plays, he is a musician to the core. He has the charisma to match so why is it so few people outside Mali know his name? Malian singer and guitarist Habib Koité’s new album, Afriki, has been a long time coming. It’s been six years in fact since his sophisticated pan-Malian album Baro, the critically well-received release that saw him break through in a big way in America, playing in front of packed houses and receiving plaudits from some of that country’s leading commentators and artists, including Bonnie Raitt (with whom Habib worked). There was even a slightly incongruous comparison by Raitt between Koité’s warm, eloquent acoustic guitar picking and Jimi Hendrix in Rolling Stone magazine.
Habib confessed to me, “I’m very honoured of course and I consider Bonnie Raitt as my sister so I’m very moved. I grew up listening to pop and rock so it’s a wonderful compliment. I wouldn’t compare my style to Hendrix technically speaking and people who listen to my guitar playing might not make the link with Hendrix’s playing, but he had a huge influence over all guitarists around the world of course as he opened news horizons for the instrument.” I ask Habib if his popularity in the States is a deliberate strategy, because although he does well in Europe, he is often considered a lesser artist to big West African guns such as Salif Keita and Youssou N’dour in the UK. “It’s true in fact, but this wasn’t planned,” he replies. “It’s probably due to the fact that my manager is in Europe. it naturally got me to widen my horizons and play in Europe and then in the States more often. My relationship with the American label Putumayo, who had released some of my previous albums obviously helped spread my music in North America. It’s hard to say with the UK — it’s true that the UK is one place where I toured in the past, but not as much as in other European countries and now the situation forcing Malian musicians to go to Dakar to get their work visas makes it difficult for Malian musicians to tour in the UK. Let’s hope it gets solved soon.”
If there’s one album that might see Habib Koité break through in the UK, it’s the carefully-crafted Afriki, which sees Habib taking on the more traditional approach that appeals to British audiences, and the welcome addition of female-backing harmonies to set off Koité’s smooth vocals. “Afriki has a lot of different elements from the great Malian tradition of music because this is the music I grew up with,” explains Habib. “Even if my music contains other influences like jazz, rock, pop, Latin, tradition is also an essential influence and I listen to a lot of traditional music so you will not always hear it as I blend it with other influences, but it’s definitely there. In my previous albums, I didn’t incorporate female vocalists at all but I wanted to broaden the spectrum of my music with Afriki. So I added these to try new experiences with these female griots from the the Mandinka tradition — to bring a new flavour to my music.”
And what a satisfying flavour it is, easily the most interesting and varied album yet from Koité, with some great rolling Mandé grooves but with Habib retaining the smooth, melodic, Westernised values that’s a result of his multifaceted background.
“I was actually born in Senegal as my father was working for the train industry there. When I was one, my family moved to Kaye in Mali [near the border with Senegal] and two years afterwards, the whole family moved to Bamako — this is where I grew up. My music is made of several influences as I spent fifteen years playing in clubs in Mali and got in contact with many different styles, not only from Mali, but from Africa, also from rock, pop, Latin music. All these different influences have blended into my music.”
That blend works particularly well on Nta Dima on the new album, through the use of the entrancing, other-worldly sound of five antelope horns. What prompted their use? “I wanted to have this horn section in one of the songs in Afriki,” Habib explains. “These voices of five horns are very interesting and play cyclically. It’s a very old tradition from Mali. I talked to the musicians and they told me that the new generation is not learning how to play these so there is a risk that this tradition will disappear, unfortunately. This is also why I wanted to preserve them through my record.”
Another traditional sound is the melancholy tone of sokou (traditional violin) playing by the late Hassey Sarré on Barra. “Hassey was a great musician from Niafunke and he died too soon, sadly. He died before being able to listen to the finished album. Hassey opened my ears to the music of Niafunke and I spent a lot of time with him. He enabled me to understand this music which has been popularised by such greats as Ali Farka Touré and Afel Bocoum and in which sokou — a traditional violin he was playing — plays an important role. In concert, I play Hassey’s parts myself with the guitar as an homage.”
I ask Habib about the themes of the songs on the album. Many appear to be about love and family. “Yes, but I would say I wanted to focus on my land, Africa and its evolution more generally. I talk about Mali of course and I wanted to analyse Africa’s forces and weaknesses. I want to understand how we could solve the problems that the continent is facing. So many African people are risking their lives to emigrate to Europe or the USA and my goal is to change mentalities and see how we could work on building a new stronger Africa.”
With that outlook, some wonderful musical moments and a planned promotional tour that will take in the UK early in 2008, Afriki has the makings of being the album that sees Habib Koité really break into the top division of roots-based Malian music. I politely request that we don’t wait six years till the next one. “I promise — I am working on finding a way to tour and work on new projects at the same time. I now have some software that enables me to work on my music on the laptop while I’m travelling so that should speed up the process. After the last album I started to get very busy touring and time has flown too quickly, I was out of Mali for long periods of time and I’m also trying to have a family life, so these elements combined left me with little time to record music. The ideas were there but I’ve had little time to implement them and record Afriki. We basically recorded the album over several months and we used different locations following my schedule. I recorded in Mali with the local Malian musicians of course and I also used a studio in Europe — where my manager is based — as it was more practical. And also Cumbancha’s [Habib’s record label] studios in Vermont. But I’m sure you won’t have to wait another 6 years for the next one!”

This feature first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com

SINA SINAYOKO - Boula (Wanda)

The influence of donso music on Keita's Moffou and Mbemba is more apparent in the music of Keita's 'spiritual father', sexagenarian Sina Sinayoko. There's much in common between Boula and those great albums - the same languid pulse, the same use of sweet female harmonies (supplied here by Keita's three sisters), the same exquisite, shifting interplay between the natural, elegant rhythms of the instruments, all of which benefits from the spacious production of which Keita has become such a master. Like Coulibaly, Sinayoko is a master of the simbi, but rather than being percussive, his songs tend to be built around the subtle sound of the bolon and seem designed to seduce rather than entrance (in fact this is 'Donso-foly' music, traditionally used to purify hunters before and after their hunting treks). At a tantalising half an hour's length, Boula is that rare creature in today's more-is-less world of 60-minute-plus albums, in being a song or two shorter than it could be. A pity, because the addictive combination of Sinayoko's strong but gentle voice and those sinuous backing vocalists, all set against softly fluctuating rhythms, puts Boula just a couple of unforgettable tunes short of being a contender for traditional African album of the year.

www.emarcy.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.

ADAMA COULIBALY - Baba (Wanda)

The first two albums out of the stable of Salif Keita’s new Wanda studio and label illustrate the singer’s commitment to traditional Manding music by showcasing two performers of the donso (hunter) music of Mali.
The Coulibaly clan is pre-eminent amongst the ancient hunter families of Mali, the name every bit as noble and prestigious as that of the Keitas in the rest of the country. Adama Coulibaly plays a griot-style rôle in the culture, driving stark, insistent rhythms with his donso ngoni (the hunters' six-stringed version of the ngoni, also known as the simbi), alongside bolon (bass kora), karigan (metal scraper) and calabash as he declaims lyrics about the key facets of hunting life (friendship, prudence and respect for elder hunters) in a deep, rich tenor with suitably resonant male backing vocal support. The result is atmospheric, hypnotic, and with the timeless but contemporary quality which was a hallmark of Salif Keita's back-to-roots albums. The songs here possess a harsher, less immediate edge than Keita's recordings, however, with circular, trance-like rhythms and incantations holding atavistic sway within Djely Moussa Kouyaté's discreetly contemporary arrangements, with a sprinkling of nagging melodies and judicious inclusion of electric guitar from Kouyaté helping to retain interest in this faithful recreation of a fascinating brand of traditional West African music. One warning for anyone thinking of checking the album out at their nearest listening post: the cruellest of tricks has been played on Adama, as the album opens with what is ostensibly a duet with Salif Keita, but which would not sound out of place on any of Keita's recent works. Adama Coulibaly is a fine singer, but nobody should be made to follow the Golden Voice of Mali on their own album.

www.emarcy.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.

LES FRERES GUISSE/LEONI JANSEN BAND - Nina (Noon Records)

Les Frères Guissé are three brothers from Senegal with a light, harmonious approach to music-making. Siré appears to have been recorded a couple of years ago and is full of pleasant, melodious music, the brothers' combined voices possessing a sweet tone which floats over gentle, mid-tempo acoustic rhythm guitar and percussion. A guest appearance from American jazz singer Jennifer Chase adds a welcome bluesy edge to Anta Majigen Ndiaye, but more changes of pace and timbre would help maintain interest, a point underlined by the stirring sound of the a cappella song P'tit ecolier, which comes marching out of the speakers to round off proceedings.
There's plenty of variety to the brothers' collaboration with Dutch folk singer Leoni Jansen and her band. From delicate arrangements of traditional folk tunes (Swallow, Redwinged Blackbird from Europe, Slaves Lament from Senegal) to Guissé originals spiced with elements of jazz, Cuban son and rock (including some ear-shatteringly horrible wailing jazz-rock guitar on Canto del Amor, unfortunately), the combination of the Senegalese singers' tight harmonies and Jansen's vivid vocals (similar in tone but slightly lighter than that of the Mekons' Sally Timms) makes for an interesting - if only intermittently successful - experiment.

www.freresguisse.com
www.mundialproductions.nl
www.onnokrijn.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.

KINOBE - Soul Language (Multicultural Music)

Twenty-four year-old Kinobe Herbert is from Uganda in the East of Africa, and has studied kora with Malian Toumani Diabaté as well as working with Baaba Maal in Senegal. As a result, on Soul Language he has brought West African instruments together with traditional ones from his native country to build a set of sparse but colourful songs with the help of guitarist Michael Ouma (the tingle of kalimba thumb piano and buzz of the Ugandan harp in particular working to good effect). Kinobe has that elusive knack of producing melodies that wheedle their way into the brain over time, and although the overall feel to this album is somewhat unrefined and rough around the edges (his vocals are good, but unremarkable), his will definitely be a name to watch out for in the future.

www.nomadroots.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.

HALLELUJAH CHICKEN RUN BAND - Take One (1974-79) (Analog Africa)

In what has been an astonishing year for African compilations, this collection of mid-’70s singles from Zimbabwe’s ground-breaking electric mbira group must rank as one of the most vital. Thomas Mapfumo was a member of the original incarnation of a band formed by trumpeter Daram Karanga on behalf of the Mangura copper mine company in order to entertain the workers. Mapfumo left in a dispute over wages having recorded just one session with the band, but not before leaving his mark with the provenance of their name (he and other another band member worked at a local chicken coop, which prompted the mine boss to inexplicably shout “Hallelujah!”) as well as the light, catchy “Zimpop” sound the band produced - the crisp interchange between mbira-mimicking electric guitars that pre-dated Mapfumo’s chimurenga style, the driving rhythms and that distinctive, soulful Mapfumo vocal style. But his involvement only accounts for four of the 18 tracks here, and although the band only managed to last another four years, there’s no sign of an artistic decline in their output. Mwana Wamai Dada Naye - released towards the end of their existence in 1979 — is wonderful evidence of that, presaging the infectious, guitar-driven pop of the Soul Brothers and Bhundu Boys with irresistible interweaving electric guitar, funky brass and some fine vocals by Lovemore Nyamasviva. There’s much more in that vein, but elements of traditional Shona styles as well (on Murembo and Mukadzi Wangu Ndomuda) and a finely-tuned awareness of the appeal of the hybrid pop/soul/jazz horn arrangements evident in South African kwela music at the time. With contemporary subject matter that sadly still rings true - concerns about education, the price of commodities and struggle for liberation sit with familiar day-to-day concerns about love and family matters — and a light, dance-friendly feel throughout, Analog Africa have come up with the perfect companion to the Green Arrows’ 4 Track Recording Session collection from earlier in the year.

This review first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com

AKIM EL SIKAMEYA - Un Chouia D'amour

The cover of the album doesn’t augur too well — Akim looks like a young Bill Murray who’s just got lucky in a tart’s boudoir. So it’s a relief to hear his extraordinary voice and violin playing gratifyingly wrapped in some sweet and catchy tunes. Akim El Sikameya astonished Womad audiences a couple of years back with a voice that seems bereft of all masculinity, ranging from a choirboy’s alto to that of a husky female. It’s always a beautiful sound, however, and the light and airy Mediterranean pop songs here are a delight to behold. Violin, accordion, charango, bouzouki, mandolin, piano, percussion and guitar come together in a mellifluous blend of French-style (and quite often French language) chanson, flamenco, tango, and the chaabi Arabic pop style more familiar in Akim’s native Algeria. Highlights include the jauntily catchy opener and title track, which would do well on the continent’s more discerning dance floors. The Arabic-language Le Sultan Tyran makes superb use of Aster Piazzolla’s Libertango motif, with mournful, eloquent phrasing from Akim on violin dovetailing with Philippe Eidel’s accordeon. And the jazzier, more reflective second half of the CD opens with Cahwa et Fleur D’Oranger, which features some delightful bouzouki work from Taofik Farah, funky brass figures and Akim El Sikameya’s voice at its best - part Smokey Robinson, part French-Algerian pop-rai star Faudel. A handful of the tracks don’t work quite so well, veering a bit to close to lounge pop at times. But the best moments make this a very rewarding collection indeed, with or without the tacky album cover.

This review first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com

JUSTIN ADAMS AND JULDEH CAMARA - Soul Science (IRL/Wayward)

As Jeff Bridges might once have said: Rock ‘n’ Riti - phew! Put Justin Adams’s Bo Diddley-meets-buzzsaw blues guitar with Juldeh Camara’s hyperactive single-string violin playing and you’ve got one of the most exhilarating boundary crossing releases of the year.
In world music circles, Adams is probably best known as the producer of bands Lo’Jo and Tinariwen and creator of the well-received Arabaseque-meets-desert-blues album Desert Road. But he’s also got an interesting side hobby as Robert Plant’s guitarist, and (the occasional acoustic guitar or tehardant lute appearance apart) that rockier influence is very apparent on Soul Science as Adams thrashes, picks, distorts, strums and generally stretches his instrument in all sorts of interesting blues-based rock guitar directions. Around all these effects dances the rootsy fiddle work of Juldeh Camara, a Fulani from Gambia and ex-member of Ifang Bondi (and more latterly guest on kora player Seckou Keita’s Afro-Mandinka Soul album). But we’ve never heard Camara quite like this before, his performances ranging from manic spirit-raising screeches to swift, elaborate melodies (at times it’s hard to believe are being pulled from such a simple instrument).
His voice is a remarkable surprise as well — rich, confident and assured in contrast to Adams’s less convincing vocal on Blue Man Returns (Camara handles all the rest of the vocals). And a note too about the musicians whose contributions underpin a consistently engaging sound — Salah Dawson Miller on drums and Billy Fuller on bass provide a rhythmic drive more than equal to the thrilling ride on which Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara take the listener. Thrilling stuff.

SA DING DING - Alive (Wrasse)

One of the hardest things to get right in this non-existent genre that we insist on calling ‘world music’ is the marriage between modern arrangements and traditional instrumentation and melodies. On Alive, China’s multi-million selling singer Sa Ding Ding has achieved just such a marriage with exceptional style and grace.
If she were singing in English, Sa Ding Ding might already be a global superstar. Her striking voice is unmistakably East Asian, but with an elegance and soulful poise with which a broader audience should easily be able to connect.
The songs (sung in Tibetan, Mandarin, Sanskrit or Sa Ding Ding’s own self-created language) are built around traditional Chinese folk music but exquisitely executed with refined use of programmed electronic sounds and beats in tandem with Chinese instrumentation -gu zheng zither (sounding particularly effective on the title track), ma tou qin violin and bamboo flute.
Haunting is a word that comes constantly to mind, especially on the aforementioned title track and another highlight Lagu Lagu, on which Sa Ding Ding really pushes her voice to its emotional limits, one moment delicately, playfully dancing over washes of keyboard and ethereal backing vocals, the next stretching her voice out almost to a shout against a thudding percussion backbeat.
An exceptional track but the centrepieces of the album are the pair of tracks that appear in two forms on the album (delivered first in Tibetan, then Mandarin). Holy Incense is delicately flavoured, hauntingly melodic and with atmospheric male backing.
Contrastingly, the title track is magnificent in its brooding, stalking defiance, with Sa Ding Ding’s voice at its sweet but unyielding best as programmed beats and guitar crash against traditional instruments. A great brace of songs on a very impressive album.

This review first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com

LA XULA - In Xile

A funky, gothic mix of London metro-cool and fiery Madrilena, LaXula’s Monte PalafoX has been one of the most alluring acts on the UK gig circuit in 2007, and after months of growing internet interest, her band LaXula’s intriguing debut CD is at last getting a full UK release.
Opening with La Boulette - a dynamic, hard-hitting hip hop flamenco number of which Ojos de Brujo would be proud — and followed by the glorious, stalking tango-meets-gypsy track Soberbia (which has already been featured on Charlie Gillett’s Sound of the World compilation), In X-ile gets off to an attention-grabbing start. If the album thereafter struggles to match the heights of the band’s seductive stage show, there’s enough good work here to make this is a very impressive debut overall.
In truth, Monte doesn’t have the greatest voice — limited in range, it sometimes sounds flattered by appearing on the same bill as great singers such as Mariza and Cesaria Evora, as she did this year at WOMAD — but she makes best use of its dark, sultry tone as part of brooding song structures like the urgent accordeon, violin and marching drum rhythm that make up Semilla, or when dancing lightly around soft acoustic guitar and teasing accordeon fills on the seductive title-track. And La Luna sees Monte and the band at their epic, intricate best, with large tambourine, flute, guitar and Moorish male backing vocals spilling out new nuances and hidden details with each airing. This and the first two tracks alone make this an album well worth investigating, although the feeling remains that you really need to see this fascinating band and its captivating lead singer live in order to really get the best of them.

This review first appeared on www.flyglobalmusic.com