Anansy Cissé
Anoura
Riverboat Records/World Music Network
Review by Mike Adcock
This
new album from Malian singer and guitarist Anansy Cissé was produced over a
period of four years against a background of political turmoil in the north of
Mali where Cissé is from. The sleeve notes tell us that that some of the songs,
all sung in his own Songhai language, reflect this particular social situation
while others express more personal feelings. The four years have allowed time
for the production to be well honed and with its thoughtful layering of
interlocking guitar overdubs it certainly feels like a studio album, but it's
none the worse for that and never sounds overworked.
"Tiawo"
Throughout the album there is an extremely effective play-off between the
acoustic and electric sounds coming from guitar, ngoni and, on two tracks, the
soku, a Malian fiddle. Setting the whole thing off is "Tiawo" which begins with
solo ngoni before being joined by acoustic guitar, bass and light percussion to
establish a gentle lilting rhythm with no hint of the overt amplification to
come. The vocals come in and then the somewhat unexpected sound of a sustained
electric guitar, low in the mix but adding a new colour. And then there's
another surprise towards the end of the track as a throaty electric guitar
kicks in for a bluesy solo before the final vocal chorus.
"Mina"
Other tracks have a more consistently electric feel and there are enough classy
blues riffs interweaving here to keep any blues rocker in business for a long
time. The instrumental "Mina" might be hard to describe without the word
'boogie' coming into play and wondering whether this is a number that Canned
Heat just never got round to recording.
"Balkissa"
During the period that Anoura was coming together the fine soku player
Zoumana Tereta died, very shortly after he contributed some beautifully lyrical
playing to the tracks "Talka" and "Balkissa". It was perhaps hoped that he
would have had a greater presence on the album, with the similarity of tone
which Cissé draws from his electric guitar on some other tracks suggesting that
this might have been in his mind. In addition we have Abdoulaye Koné and Bakari
Diarra playing ngoni, Abrahmane Touré on bass guitar, Mahalmadane Traoré, bass
guitar, calabash and percussion, with Bally du Desert and Ouma Diarra providing
backing vocals.
There is no doubt that this is a Malian album. It feels
as if those blues and rock guitar styles developed over the last few decades
outside Africa are here being reclaimed, recontextualized. And one thing that
is very different is the rhythm, which in the main has a gentle, rolling feel to
it. The sound of the guitar might be cranked up, put through a pedal or two,
there might be a fair amount of heavy riffing going on and sometimes some moody
bass, but there's no rock drumming here. In keeping with much Malian music the
percussion is minimal and understated, allowing the melodic rhythmic patterns
to work across each other uncluttered and for all its tonal variety there is a
fine sense of space pervading this album.
