ABDOULAYE TRAORE & MOHAMED DIABY - Debademba (Naive)/DIOM DE KOSSA - In My Father’s Shadow (Talik)

Debabemba means “big family” in Bambara, and there’s a feeling of extended family get-together about this beefy, sonically wide-ranging album that was hatched in the bustling Parisian suburb of Belleville. Traoré, a guitarist originally from Burkina Faso, has teamed up with Ivorian Diaby, a singer with a remarkable voice that combines the forceful declamations of his griot antecedents with velvety, emotive expression.

Produced and arranged with a sumptuous Parisian-African sensibility, the album is topped and tailed by a folsksy ballad and a salsa workout, between which the listener is taken on a whirlwind tour of electric Bambara, jazz, soul and blues, tinged with Afrobeat in places and all of it infused with strains of Andalusion guitar and Arabic textures (including the snaking, breathy melodies of flautist Naissam Jalal).

If that sounds a bit too rich a mix, at times Debademba does trip over its own ambitious attempt to create such a melting pot of styles, particularly in the two extended jazz inflected workouts that weigh down the midpoint of the album. But either side of those tracks, Debademba exudes impressive reserves of vibrancy and inspiration.

Agnakamina – all tumbling rhythm, twangy guitar and wild flute – crackles with energy; Kiele Djola builds a strummed mandolin opening into an up-tempo blend of north- and west-African grooves; and Loundotemena swings exquisitely around acoustic guitar, with balafon with ngoni melodies trailing and mimicking those of gospel-style female backing.

Guest singers Fatou Diawarra and Awa add more distaff variety in consecutive songs towards the end of the album, the latter’s slightly other-worldly tones breathing character into Camille Hablar’s cello on the off-kilter Africa Blues. All of which tips the balance of this appealing album in favour of successful execution of myriad influences against the overwrought mess it could so easily have been.

www.chapablues.com

Diom de Kossa is an Ivorian singer whose spacious album contains tunes that sound as if they were written for outdoor summer airing. De Kossa floats easy melodies in his strong baritone voice over a stock electric four-piece backing, with backing singers and the deployment of traditional instruments such as the konting lute leavening arrangements where the repeated choruses and ever-so-slightly extraneous lead guitar or drum fills can lead to a serious case of festival-style mind-wander, although there’s usually enough of an edge to snap the listener back to attention. With a couple of jaunty traditional numbers beaten out on the Yadoh drum, Baba Toulenga makes for a decent, unobtrusively feel-good summer soundtrack.

www.talik.no

ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE BARBES - Alik (Wagram)

If ever there was a group that reflected the area from which they hail, it's Orchestre National de Barbès, the collective which claims the multicultural Parisian quarter after which they are named as a nation in its own right and pays tribute to the area's tough, bustling diversity with a thick stew of spicy Arabic-French rock music.
North Africa provides the main foundation for the sound, more specifically Algeria (where the principle members' roots belong), so rock clashes with chaâbi, soukous guitars augment tight gnawa grooves, whilst Rai's urban rebellion and a streak of inner-city radicalism run like threads through most of the songs (the semi-acerbic anti-ID cards attack song Residence hits its target with a particularly satisfying Congolese-guitar-led élan).
The album opens at ninety-miles-an-hour with the hard-rockin' Civilise and speeds up from there, rattling between Arabic and French language songs driven by relentless beats and the twin electric guitar attack of Fathellah Ghoggal and Khlif Miziallaoua.
Most songs work from a Taha-esque dark-glasses-and-leather-trouser rai-rock template - although Fatah Benlala' vocals are more cool Khaled than rough Rachid - but there's a distinct Parisian influence as well, not least on La Rose on which a waltzing java accordion pushes along a jaunty, ironically delivered sing-along-a-love-song.
There's only one real bum note (if we pass over a barely-passable French-language cover of the Stones' Sympathy for the Devil) in Madame, more shabby than chaâbi in its crude plastic punkiness, and it is to be hoped that this song (and the album's general leaning towards a more rock-orientated edge than previously) doesn't signal too much of a change in future direction. It's true to say that admirers of the Orchestre National de Barbès of old might be slightly disappointed at the loss of many of the rootsier elements of the band's sound (there's nothing on the album that comes close to the gloriously hypnotic desert blues title-track of Poulina, for example) but with the flame of originality still burning strong, there's plenty here of interest for now.

UK distribution via Discovery Records

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.