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Le Grand Kalle: His Life, His Music
by Chris May
Singer and composer Joseph Kabasele, aka Le Grand Kallé, is widely credited with the creation of “Congolese rumba," the most popular style in Central and East Africa during the 1960s and 1970s. In reality, Congolese rumba was born of several parents, but Kabasele's role in its creation was far reaching and has become the best documented. He was instrumental in blending traditional Congolese music with Cuban dance music--which was rooted in the music Congolese slaves had brought to the island ...
read moreMose Fan Fan: Musicatelama
by Chris May
Mose Fan FanMusicatelamaSterns2012Considering the barbarism of Congo's Belgian colonial regime, which stripped the country of everything bar the light bulbs when independence was won in 1960, it is a wonder that music as beautiful Congolese rumba was created in the late 1940s and 1950s. But the style transcended the circumstances in which it was born (and went on to influence popular music across much of west, central and east Africa during the ...
read moreAfrica: 50 Years of Music - 50 Years of Independence
by Chris May
Various ArtistsAfrica: 50 Years of Music: 50 Years of IndependenceSterns2010 “In my country alone, there are 80 ethnic groups and 200 dialects," says the Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango in an interview in the booklet enclosed with this box set. “So it's hard to talk about Cameroonian music in the singular. There are thousands of types of African music." To provide a fully comprehensive survey of African music is, ...
read moreMayra Andrade: Storia Storia
by Chris May
Seemingly coming out of nowhere in 2007, singer Mayra Andrade single handedly rebooted the prevailing stereotype of Cape Verdean music with her debut album, Navega (Sterns). Sunny and gorgeously melodic, the disc provided a counterweight to the anguished oeuvre of Cesaria Evora, the “Barefoot Diva" who had been the international voice of Cape Verdean popular music since the late 1980s. To date, Navega has sold 70,000 copies and rising, quite an achievement for an unknown artist on a roots-based specialist ...
read moreMayra Andrade: Navega
by Chris May
Until now, for most people, the music of the Cape Verde islands has started and finished with the singer Cesaria Evora, who arrived on the international stage, aged 47, with the album La Diva Aux Pieds Nus (Lusafrica, 1988), becoming a festival-headlining world music star with Miss Perfumado (Lusafrica, 1992). Evora's style is called morna, and like its primary source material--which prominently includes Portugese fado and Angolan landu (lament)--excels at expressing sadness, loss and heartbreak. It's a kind of mid-Atlantic ...
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