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Balla et ses Balladins / Issa Bagayogo / Rail Band: electric-roots at their best, and worst
by Chris May
Two albums from Mali--the second release in a sparkling Rail Band archive collection, Rail Band 2: Mansa, and Issa Bagayogo's Mali Koura--recorded over thirty years apart, show how electric-roots music should and shouldn't be made. A third album, from neighbouring Guinea--Balla et ses Balladins: The Syliphone Years--documents one of the most creative and accomplished, ...
Habib Koite & Bamada: Afriki
by Chris May
Habib Koite & Bamada Afriki Cumbancha 2007 With his third album, Baro (Putumayo, 2001), Malian guitarist, singer and songwriter Habib Koite attracted the kind of celebrity endorsements you imagine some press agents might kill for. Joan Baez ranked Koite alongside Jimi Hendrix in the pantheon of guitar greats, while, backstage ...
Extra Golden: Hera Ma Nono
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Extra Golden Hera Ma Nono Thrill Jockey 2007 The FM-rock supergroup Foreigner chose its name to reflect the mixed nationality of its members, assorted Brits and Yanks. Wherever they were, they said, someone in the band was a foreigner. Presumably the anomie engendered by this situation lent emotional ...
Madilu System, Vieux Farka Toure, Orchestra Baobab
by Chris May
Three ripe and fragrant albums taking in the modern and the post-modern, the venerable and the cutting edge. La Bonne Humeur is the last sonic will and testament of Congolese soukous star Madilu System, who passed shortly after recording it. Remixed: UFOs Over Bamako is a re-interpretation of tracks from the 2007 debut album by Malian ...
Ethiopia: The Last Days of Ras Tafari & Mali: Salif Keita Launches Wanda Label
by Chris May
This month, traditional music from Mali and more recent, jazz and funk cross-pollinated styles from Ethiopia. The Very Best Of Ethiopiques chronicles the work of artists in Addis Ababa during the final, surreal years of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie's rule. Boula and Baba are two roots albums on Malian singer Salif Keita's newly formed label, Wanda ...
Bembeya Jazz National & Tabu Ley: Masterpieces From The Guinean And Congolese Belle Epoques
by Chris May
An irony of post-1980s world music is that it has sustained an interest in the earlier, belle epoque musical styles of post-colonial Africa, elements of which it reshaped and recalibrated for a global audience--not necessarily to either their detriment or advantage, but whose evolution it nonetheless influenced and accelerated. Now more than ever, the belle epoque's ...
Guinea's Diabate Brothers: Virtuoso Guitarists Unplugged
by Chris May
African Virtuoses African Virtuoses: The Classic Guinean Guitar Group Sterns 2007 This enchanting and exquisitely beautiful album, originally released in 1983, features four of the top electric guitarists of the pre-world music “golden years" of west African music, performing unplugged. Fragrant, lyrical and reviving, a ripe mango of ...
Salif Keita, Mory Kante, Bembeya Jazz: Africa for the Africans
by Chris May
The 1960s and 1970s are often referred to as the “golden years" of African music. As more and more African countries freed themselves from colonialism, a wave of artists emerged who celebrated their own cultural legacies rather than those validated by their erstwhile European rulers. This post-colonial generation played roots-based styles employing traditional instruments and African-language ...
Blurring Boundaries: Mauritanian Blues & The Music Of A Continent
by Jeff Dayton-Johnson
Where does Africa begin and where does it end? Geographically, I mean. Oftentimes, when people say “Africa," they mean “Africa south of the Sahara." That may be a useful shorthand in many contexts, but in musical terms, the Sahara desert has been a very permeable border and it makes more sense to talk about ...
Cumulative Index of African Music CD Reviews
by AAJ Staff
In Africa, music occupies a central role in human existence--from birth to death, from somber ritual to joyous celebration. Traditional African music has passed from generation to generation over hundreds of years; because master musicians occupy a very prominent position in society, their art serves many roles. Instruments, forms, and arrangements go back before recorded history.
