VARIOUS ARTISTS - Sénégal – Echo Musical (Syllart )

African Pearls number...difficult to keep up – nine or ten is it?...takes us back for some more of the dense Cubano-to-mbalax dance music of the mid-1970s that crept into the earlier, more earthy and folkloric collection in this series, Teranga Spirit and then broke forth on the excellent Sénégal 70 – Musical Effervescence. Featured here are many of the stellar acts that represent the apogee of urban Senegal’s vibrant mbalax scene. Star Band, Youssou (how clear, how pristine that voice was even in the early days), Ifang Bondi and Super Diamono are the headline acts on what is probably the best of the Senegal collections in the series so far. As an introduction to the sabar-thwacking polyrhythm, meaty guitar lines that ripple out in all sorts of ear-grabbing sonic directions, oh-so-seventies keyboard wigs-out and thumping brass that took this nation on a great musical leap forward, you probably couldn’t wish for more. It’s good to see Orchestre Guelewar de Banjul amongst the choices. Originally hailing from Gambia, on Wartef Jigen they exemplify the gritty, urban soul that speaks so redolently of the urbanisation of the West African musical milieu at the time.

As with all of these carefully-chosen, well-annotated and informative rounds-up of Ibrama Sylla's golden-era Syliphone productions, Echo Musical comes highly recommended for all those who are interested in the gold-dust days of West African popular music. And this one, rich as it is in some of the cherry-picked tracks from some of the best albums of the era, goes down as the best starting point yet for this possibly never-to-be-bettered period for Senegalese music.

KELETIGUI ET SES TAMBOURINIS - The Syliphone Years (Stern's)

Saxophone player, flautist and band leader Keletigui Traore died in November 2008 aged 74, so the fourth release in Stern’s series anthologising Guinea's tradition-rooted "authenticité" orchestras of the 1960s and 1970s arrives with poignant timing. The (as ever) attractively-packaged and informative double-CD release covers Keletigui et Ses Tambourinis’ most creative and popular period, beginning in 1968 shortly after they’d changed their name from Orchestre de la Paillote and finishing in 1976 as the strains of soukous start to peep through the band’s Guinean groove.

Between times we are witness to the gradual infusion of indigenous influences – via balafon and flute and the adaptation of folkloric styles and songs – into the ever-present Latin and jazz influences.

The first CD – covering the period from 1968 to 1970 – has a strong Cuban edge, with horns, percussion and vocals to the fore, and electric guitar very much buried in the mix (frustratingly at times, it has to be said). But the guitar came out from under the covers as production values improved in the early ‘70s to influence the swinging, ringing sound of compatriots Bembeya Jazz amongst others.

Keletigui employed some good singers, amongst which who Manfila Kanté with his high, slightly nasal vocal; Papa Kouyaté’s cool commanding tone; and Keletigui himself. But it was the soloists who place the ensemble in the top division. The man himself led the way on alto sax and fluttering flute (and, latterly, organ), with fellow saxophonists Bigné Doumbia and Momo “Wandel” Soumah lending meaty and melodic support. Kerfala Camara’s colourful trumpet solos stand out too, and the two Condés – Linké and Sekou – contribute ringing guitar licks, while the liquid babble of balafon player Lansana Diabaté is a key driver on the tracks from the early ‘70s.

Amongst many highlights are the punchy, conga-led Cubanismo tracks such as La Bicycletta, the zestful guitar and saxophone sway of Bébé, the reinterpretation of traditional hunting song Donsoké, and Kadia Blues, a snaking jazz-blues instrumental that begs for a sultry female vocal. All of which – with the usual excellent sleeve-notes by Graeme Counsel – makes The Syliphone Years is a fitting tribute to a recently-departed great.

www.sternsmusic.com

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Marvellous Boy – Calypso from West Africa/World is Shaking – Cubanismo from The Congo (Honest Jon's)

Bedecked with retro black and white photography so redolent of the era covered, garnished with first class informative sleeve notes contained in tactile gatefold cardboard sleeves, Honest Jon’s albums - culled from EMI’s extensive Hayes archive of worldwide 78s - are enough to bring out the gotta-collect-‘em-all inner anorak in the best of us, especially when the music therein is as excellent as that on the London is the Place for Me series of calypso music that has achieved such acclaim.

Marvellous Boy – Calypso from West Africa is a more than worthwhile companion to those albums, covering recordings that cover the period from (roughly) the early ‘40s to mid ‘50s when Caribbean influences spread from the Creole (or Krio) artists of Freetown in Sierra Leone to the highlife sound of the other English-speaking West African countries, Ghana and Nigeria. Many of the songs here are consequently English-language, and bear the Calypsonian trait of humorous tales (or serious tales told with wit) told over a loose, playful backing. Bobby Benson and his Combo utilise their ballroom-band past on a playful cover of the Calypsonian classic Taxi Driver (I Don’t Care), all punchy sax, yelping trumpet and don’t-care-what-she-does attitude. Horn sections were crucial to the distinctive highlife-isation of this music, Ghana’s E T Mensah leading the way across the region, and represented here with the languorous and ever so slightly disturbing The Tree and the Monkey. Another big influence was Freetown’s Ebenezer Calendar, who brings his half-Barbadian roots to three tracks lightened by banjo-player Famous Scrubbs, excellent in his own right on Scrubbs Na Marvellous Boy, the S E Rogie-a-like Krio song that lends itself to the title of this consistently engaging collection, as calypso stepped into - and finally, permanently, out of - highlife and other local guitar styles.

The World is Shaking- Cubanismo from the Congo takes us back to the seminal years when Congolese musicians took the jazz and Latin-influenced music of their predecessors, mixed it with a picked - mostly dual, acoustic - guitar that imitated the Cuban son mutano piano style, and dropped likembe thumb piano into the mix plus occasional kazoo and fiddle to produce a dance music with a strong folkloric feel that reflected the nascent cultural confidence of the nation (reflected also by lyrics that were changed from Spanish to Lingala and Kikongo where applicable).

European-style polka piké, plus Latino biguines and rumba rhythms were still extant during this period, but the rudimentary recording standards can’t hide the increasingly sophisticated musicianship as those influences were bent and twisted around local styles, and despite one or two modest selections the biggest surprise listening to these cheerily attractive sounds is how quickly some of the artists here seem to have disappeared from history (perhaps through the advent of electric guitar?).

Boniface Koufoudila is the most traditional and exciting of the relative unknowns, an artist operating at the crossroads of the various styles with songs driven by likembe and fluid, attacking Cubano-Congolese polyrhythm, over which are laid sawing violin and chanted vocals. There’s plenty of sweeter stuff elsewhere, not least the five tracks by the most enduring of the artists captured here. Adikwa Depala went on to record with the-then Zaire’s Loningisa label – home to Franco’s OK Jazz – and Moni, Moni Non Dey, his version of El Manisero (Peanut Vendor), is typical of the album, containing early bubbles of the well-spring of interlocking guitar rhythms out of which a revolutionary musical flood was about to burst. History in the making.

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Legends of Benin (Analog Africa)

Continuing Analog Africa's fascinating series of funk from '70s Benin, crate-digging compiler Ben Redjeb focuses on four of the celebrated bandleaders from the era.

Honoré Avolonto, Antoine Dougbé, Gnonnas Pedro and El Rego led tight and soulful bands that combined local styles such as the polyrhythmic call and response of Agbadja and the heavy, horn-driven Vodoun sound (as delivered by Orchestra Poly-Rythmo on another of these Analog Africa collections), with shades of Afrobeat and Latin flavours blended in to make a dense and funky stew. The ever-present influence of James Brown permeates the album, and some of it is a bit too derivative in places, right down to the repeated horn riffs and yowling yelps. But when they get it right - as on the crisp, funky opener Dadje Von O Von Non by Gnossas Pedro and his Dadjes Band, and Antoine Dougbé loose-limbed, skanking moments - it's a superior soulful sound.

It's Gnonnas Pedro and his catchy, Cuban-influenced agbadja who unsurprisingly stands out most - this legendary band leader also worked with the aforementioned Orchestra Poly-Rythmo and went on to appear with Afro-Latin band Africando. His death in 2004 plunged the nation into mourning and he is surely well-overdue his own career retrospective. Let's hope the good people at Analog Africa are on the case.

VARIOUS - African Pearls: Guinea/Mali/Senegal (Syllart)/RAIL BAND - Belle Epoque 3: Diola (Stern's)

Continuing the excellent African Pearls series digging into Ibrama Sylla's Syliphone recordings from the Congo, Guinea, Mali and Senegal. This is the second raft of compilations covering the latter three countries, taking us into the 1970s and a move away from the state-funded infusion of traditional music (although it's still evident) into a more direct attempt to modernise sounds for the popular market.

The Guinea volume is culled from a number of sources, although as the title suggests chiefly the annual “Discotheque” compilations of the 1970s.
The artists featured were still nodding towards the authenticité cultural programme of President Sekou Touré but unafraid to follow US soul music and Nigerian Afrobeat trends with extended organ and electric guitar wig-outs.
This is the sound of boys playing with their new musical toys, although finessed by the seductive sound of punchy horns, ringing guitar and bright soulful vocals. Most of the greats are represented - Bembeya Jazz, Keletigui et Ses Tambourinis, Super Boiro Band, plus the slightly lesser known Horoya Band National, who are the real revelation. They only released one album and a handful of singles, but are represented by five tracks that shimmer and sway with warmth and joy. Warning: there are two or three overlaps with 2007’s excellent Aunthenticité compilation, but that still leaves over twenty songs to serve as a worthy follow up to that album.

Of the three countries, Senegal was the country to hold onto the Cuban influences the longest, but as seen on Musical Effervescence, its artists threw themselves with some sabar-drum slapping gusto into heavily localised idioms. Much of this compilation is the sound of urban Dakar, where we can hear the burgeoning mbalax scene, where Latin rhythms competed with dense, polyrhythmic grooves and wild keyboards, vibrant guitars and strident bursts of brass exemplified best by Super Diamono de Dakar and their impassioned vocalist Omar Pene, plus the various Star and Etoile bands out of which a young Youssou can be heard heralding a new era for Senegalese music. Orchestra Baobab were caught in the cross-fire, their languid, melodic Afro-Cuban here sounding wonderfully familiar and yet almost wilfully anachronistic in this context.
Modern, experimental, uniquely rooted in tradition but pan-continental in its appeal, the music of Mali in the 1970s was characterised by a move away from the polarisation of short, Afro-Latin songs and lengthy traditional praise songs into slow, winding bluesy songs drawing on the best of both approaches. Electric guitarists push the rhythm; saxophones and electric organ wind their way around kit drum; singers declaim, chant, shout; the ever-present horns remain defiantly off-kilter. Regional orchestras started to split, although they're still here in number (Orchestre Regional De Sikasso, Orchestre Regional De Mopti, Orchestre National de Badema) but Les Ambassadeurs and Rail Band have taken centre-stage, as well as the evergreen and long-standing Super Djata Band (some wild and wailing wah-wah guitar from them). Wide-ranging and expressive, this music has remained as vital and fresh-sounding as the day it was made.
This takes us neatly onto the final volume in the Rail Band retrospective that overlaps and follows on from the period covered by the African Pearls series. This takes us through the band’s most fractious days (from 1977 to 1983) where the loss of Mory Kanté and Djelimady Tounkara (although the latter returned to add his lyrical guitar work to much of the music here) affected the overall standard of output of a band with ever-changing personnel. You wouldn’t know it from the judiciously selected tracks here though, all of which show a band of exceptional ability and verve. Sometimes bright and swinging, other times dense and winding, always pushing the boundaries of what's possible and taking in the influences necessary to do that (Afrobeat, jazz, traditional Mande praise songs). True to form for this series, the compilers have given themselves licence to make the odd musical flashback, perhaps to keep the attraction of Salif Keita and Mory Kanté across all three volumes. This shouldn't detract from a consistently impressive vocal supporting cast - in particular, Lanfia Diabaté sounds hard, soulful and full of clarity throughout.
Ironic to think that all this great music from West Africa predated most of the western world’s interest in music from this region. Who will dare take a step into the next era, where Sylla and his like decamped to Paris to record albums that arguably fail to stand the test of time in quite the way these great moments do.

ORCHESTRE POLY-RYTHMO DE COTONOU - Volume One: The Vodoun Effect 1973-1975 (Analog Africa)

More extraordinary, and previously inexplicably unknown, vintage West African funk unearthed by the diligent Afo-enthusiasts at Analog Africa. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou were from Benin, the small coastal country to the west of Nigeria, and they remained a relatively obscure band outside their native country (with as few as 500 pressings a time for some of their recordings) which seems astonishing when listening to the vibrant, heavy and enticingly polyrhythmic sound (the name doesn’t lie!) that they were plying at the time. Built around snappy, clipped guitar lines and a satisfyingly loose rhythm section, with pumping blasts from the horn section and watery organ adding a swaying, psychedelic texture to the sound, the sound (derived from the traditional Vodoun - or voodoo - rhythm called ‘sato’) is a perfect, gritty fit between the more sophisticated jazz-influence of Afrobeat and the dance friendly highlife music of Ghana and Nigeria. It’s rough and ready stuff at times (most of this music was originally recorded onto reel-reel-tape recorders using just a couple of mikes), and the vocalists are functional at best - chanting, pushing the beat on rather than being a focal point to the songs. However, it’s the intense drive of the instrumentation that appeals, with horns and guitars coming in and out of focus whilst the drummer beats out a strong, resolute beat over a babbling, bubbling bass roll. It’s ideal music for a dank and sweaty club set where groove trumps gloss, and there’s yet more of it to come - this is Volume One of Two, and given that it’s three decades since this music had even a very limited exposure, the time is ripe for the Vodoun effect to take full funky centre stage for a much wider audience.

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Highlife Time (Vampisoul)

A primer of some of the greatest of ’60s and ’70s highlife — the electrifying dance sound of Nigeria and Ghana — in a high quality, very personal selection by long time collector, compiler and DJ John Armstrong. It’s personal in that Armstrong has not resorted to objectively spreading the exposure amongst artists when making his pick of the output from the legendary Premier Studios in Nigeria’s capital Lagos, the major source for this gritty, enduringly popular guitar-based pop, and home of some of the greatest purveyors of the style. Five of the twenty tracks, then, are deservedly awarded to Rex Lawson’s mellifluous mix of ringing rhumba guitar lines, jazzy horn breaks and lyrics that mix pidgin English with the local languages, a blend that is still highly influential locally and of huge crossover appeal to fans of the Western and pan-African sounds that infuse his music. The influence of the popular, sax-playing ‘Evil Genius of Highlife’ (not a bit of it! This is tender, laid-back, seductive stuff) Dr Victor Olaiya pervades the collection as well, in his own band-leader guise (and alongside the immortal plangent tones of the Highlife King E T Mensah on the opener) and through the soulful, foot-tapping “ekassa” strain of highlife with which genius multi-instrumentalist and former Olaiya guitarist Sir Victor Uwaifo took the genre off into a whole, rhytm and blues based direction. But whether it be these famous band-leaders and musicians with their jazz-infused big band dance music and vivid, shuffling guitar rhythms, or the later, arguably more obscure artists such as funketeers Opotopo and the lead in to a possible Volume Two through the ’80s zouk track by Akana Man that closes the collection, this is heady, vibrant music that will light up any open-minded party crowd.

SIR VICTOR UWAIFO - Guitar-Boy Superstar 1970-76 (Soundway)

The wallet-busting flood of diligently researched and expertly packaged compilations of top-class West African music continues.
The subject of Soundway's admirably focused dig into the archives is Nigerian polymath Sir Victor Uwaifo’s self-styled ekassa music of the early ‘70s. Sculptor, inventor, poet and – as the title of this collection suggests – super-charged guitarist and band leader, Uwaifo is best known for mid ’60s hits with his band the Melody Maestros, such as Joromi and Guitar Boy. A few years on from those records, we find Sir Victor integrating the relaxed, shuffling folkloric music of his native Benin region into a rhythmic, funky dance sound centred round deep, dirty bass and busy rhythm guitar chops that parallel much of the American soul recordings of the period - think Betty Wright session guitarist Little Beaver’s clipped style or those hugely influential early James Brown records, the influence of the latter partially extending to the use of horns (in the form of judicious use of saxophone fills here and there). Over the top of all that, Uwaifo calls and responds with his band in his local Edo language whilst firing out some wild borderline-psychedelic wah-wah lead guitar. The result is a slightly weird, occasionally manic, always funky Nigerian dance genre to file right between your Afrobeat and highlife albums.

Soundway Records website

RAIL BAND - Belle Epoque Volume Two - Mansa (Stern’s)

Volume Two of the Rail Band Belle Epoque series continues its slightly wayward but always intriguing path through the great Malian band's early years (1970-1983) and this time focuses mainly on what is termed the second period, post-Salif Keita and at a time when Djelimady Tounkara wove his languorous, kora-like guitar figures around horn fanfares and Mory Kanté's high, declamatory vocals. Magan Ganessy and Djelimady Sissoko add less exalted but no less effective vocals, and the band swings between urgent dance tunes lightly dusted with the remnants of earlier Cuban influences and the rolling, slower-paced, unfolding epics that went on to dominate the repertoire of later period Rail Band. A couple of those later tracks feature here, one of which (Konowale) features Congolese rumba guitar by Tounkara that wouldn't be out of place on a Franco track. The compilation is rounded off by a handful of 'first period' Rail Band tracks that mark out the astonishing development of Keita as a vocalist, from his raw, almost nervous contributions in 1970 to the more recognisable soulful wail of Kankoun, recorded in 1973. The one and only complaint about this excellent series is that we are not able to follow these developments chronologically. That's what iPod playlists are for I suppose, although you wouldn't want to deny yourself the full package offered here, informative sleevenotes and evocative photos being the stock in trade of these fondly put together Stern's releases.

Stern's website

BALLA ET SES BALLADINS - The Syliphone Years (Stern's)

Balla et Ses Balladins were one of the big four Guinean orchestras of the post-independence era, bringing a grandeur to President Sékou Touré's ‘authenticité’ programme of cultural realignment with their majestic recordings for the Syliphone label under the leadership of trumpeter Balla Onivogui and trombonist Pivi Moriba.
The seemingly out of tune (but extraordinarily seductive) horn sections were something of a signature sound for this era of Guinean music, and the Balladins' brass arrangements exuded a dreamy quality, bending and swaying in and out of focus over what were initially simple Latinised popular tunes which became progressively more ambitious in scope as the band looked to traditional Mandinka influences for inspiration.
This exceptional double-CD compilation (the third in what is proving to be an essential series of adroitly mastered and packaged releases) joins the band at a peak that lasted from the late '60s (as L'Orchestre du Jardin du Guinée) through to 1980 and their final, momentous Syliphone release, Objectif Perfection.
Traces of the Latin influence were still there at the start of this period, vocalists Emile "Benny" Soumah and Manfila "Soba" Kané heartily intoning over dance numbers driven by those off-centre horns, Cuban rhythms and the ringing electric guitar breaks of Sekou “Le Docteur” Diabaté.
By the early '70s, Diabaté - one of the great lyrical guitar players to come out of Africa - and rhythm guitarist Kemo Kouyaté were the key components in the move to epic, griot-inspired pieces. On the first of these, Sara 70, the guitarists pick their mellifluous way between vocals, percussion and elongated horn breaks to produce ten minutes of music as mesmerising as just about any produced by the great West African orchestras of the period. And by 1980 - with tracks like Bambo and the near-perfect harmonic interplay of Paulette from Objectif Perfection - Balla et Ses Balladins have reached an understated, instinctive sophistication that places them squarely between (and arguably right up there alongside) the brass-led dance music of compatriots Bembeya Jazz and the dry, dense sound of Mali's Super Rail Band. Yes, that good. Highly recommended.

Stern's website

This review first appeared in fRoots magazine.