African Music Reviews Volume 3

Germany has been gaining ground as a source for especially fine world music recordings. The latest label to find a distributor over here is NETWORK (distributed by Stern's Music US, 598 Broadway, New York NY 10012 212.925.1648), a hard traveling crew whose declared ambition is ..."to go wherever the music of the world takes us" and to avoid..."overdubbing or other cosmetic effects"; and they are as good as their word. Network's catalogue currently numbers over thirty titles recorded either in Cologne at the studios of the West German Radio and Television Network or on location and each CD features copious liner notes in German, French and English. Release number twentynine is Senegal's YANDE CODOU SENE & YOUSSOU N'DOUR / GAINDE VOICES FROM THE HEART OF AFRICA is a return to Youssou's Serer tribal roots and to a 63 year old diva who has been a major inspiration to him. In this wondrous allacoustic recording, Yande Codou Sene's gruff gunmetal pearl vocals are heard either a capella or supported by her drummers and choirs preserving the voice of a sparsely documented culture. Youssou sings duets with her and also some ardent solos, including one ballad which sounds like a Senegalese take on "Stairway To Heaven," accompanied by a chiming guitar. The only quibble anyone could have with this set is the cover art, which could be made more arresting to better its chances of reaching its audience at the retail level. - Christina Roden

The new KING SUNNY ADE E DIDE/ I GET UP (MesaBluemoon), which was recorded in Seattle, is not a complete bust. But should you get up to get down, thus following the advice so helpfully tendered by the title of this opus, you'll soon end up sitting down. As the cuts run between three and five minutes in length, probably to court mainstream airplay, the result is Juju Lite. The tunes are simply not given the time to coalesce into that hypnotic polyrhythmic Juju cool that burns like dry ice. and conversely they wind up lacking anything resembling a hook. Taken as a whole, this recording is a tease from someone who well knows how to satisfy. Alas, it may be that yet another master musician is in search of the Demon Crossover, a mirage that has been the source of so many musical Faustian bargains over the past decade or so. - Christina Roden

Absolutely, this is music for dancing. This second volume of hot floor burners from Tanzania (the first was Mlimani Park's Sikinde) from Africassette is solid, grooving, relentless dance music. The bands here are among the best not only of Dar Es Salaam, but of the eastern African continent. In the wake of the short cut, radio-briefed soukous and juju we have had presented on recent tracks by Sunny Ade and Rochereau, here's some of the stuff that keeps the house rocking until the wee house. The music of Tanzania's pop scene is a hybrid of all that's hot on the continent (especially soukous, rumba, highlife and a bit of the jive and pop sounds from South Africa and Kenya), but it takes interesting twists and turns that are uniquely eastern. Heavy on the horns, these large bands churn out a smoldering sound, romantic and sensual, full of life. Even in their six to eight minute, somewhat shortened state (these were mostly recorded by national radio in their studios in the early eighties), these four bands tear it up on every track. -Cliff Furnald

Now here's an obscure treasure: music from the island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea, the first I've ever heard. The front for the group are two marvelous singers, Piruchi Apo and Paloma Loribo. They will remind you of Zap Mama, geographic neighbors of theirs. When they sing solo, they are a potent a capella force. When the band kicks in with its raw, mostly acoustic energy on guitars, bass and percussion, they absolutely steam. Little touches of soukous/rumba and lots of comparisons to Cameroon's bikutsi and even Malagasy music were made in conversation on the internet about this record. All valid, all irrelevant. If you like the Tarika, then this acoustic roots style of bands like

Two Views Of Salif Keita's Folon

Salif Keita is one of the great enigmatic characters of African music. He has made one of the most reviewed and praised albums in popular African music, Soro. His albums have also sparked more conversation and occasionally controversy than almost any other. Accused of cheap westernization on one hand and lauded as one of the first true innovators of contemporary music, Keita has seen his share of ups and downs in the press and at the record counter.But one thing no one has ever debated is that Salif Keita was his own inspiration and his own guide on his musical journey. Never one to find a trend, he has always chosen paths less travelled. Soro was a monument to that individuality, his second and third albums were a testament to his need to innovate, even if it meant failing. He learned some hard lessons about the dangers of consciously making "popular", and his last album, Amen often showed how rocky a trail that can be.

But with Folon (which means "the past") Salif Keita is returning after four years, with a roar. Here is an album that has all the best devices of pop music and all the powerful elements of tradition, forged with high musicianship and dedication by all the artists involved in the project. -cliff furnald

AFRICAN ELEGANT
Sierra Leone's Kru/Krio Calypso Connection
Original Music

If there is a measurement of pure joy, perhaps it is in the music on this disk, twenty two tracks of unadulterated delight. The <palm wine> style of Sierra Leone is probably best known through the recordings of S.E. Rogie, but Original 's J.S. Roberts has dug deep for some exhilarating early 78s by Ebenezer Calender, "Famous" Scrubbs and a number of tracks of less known Kru and mandingo artists. Palm wine music is a close relative of Trindad's calypso, developing in the same period, and influenced or becoming an influence on that popular island style in the fifties. The music grew from the jamming of African sailors, Caribbean soldiers and locals in the bars of Freetown, and the easily stowed instruments they favored like the mandolin, guitar, accordion, and banjo became the backbone of the music. With the addition of percussion, and some wonderful brass sections, these songs mirrored not only the rhythms of calypso but also its topical tendencies, with stories of local events, politics and everyday life. It's a real "chicken or egg" thing, and Robert's investigation into the roots of the music related in the liner notes do little to clear up the mystery. Irrelevant! The Calender cuts with his Maringar Band are great, with renditions of familiar tunes like "Fire, Fire, Fire" coaxed on by a tuba bass line and a chorus. The wonderful penny-whistle and mandolin sound of the Kroo Young Stars' "O Gi Te Bi" is pure exhilaration. The sound of Mandingo band of A. Cambah is unusual, very European in its trumpet part, and yet heavily African in its call and response vocals. The Kru group Amukoke could well have had relatives in Memphis jug bands of the twenties. While the roots of the music may remain shrouded in history, the music itself is no mystery at all. It is simple, open euphoria.

ORCESTRA MARRABENTA STAR DE MOÇAMBIQUE
Independance
(Piranha-Germany)

Recorded in Harare and produced by Radio Mozambique and Piranha, this band incorporates the music of South Africa, Madagascar, Zimbabwe and their own local traditions into a music that is at once folky and psychedelic, led by wonderful voices and unusual harmonies and tunings. This is hard hitting, salty stuff, full of horns and guitars and unique to its own environs.

If you swim the waters of Francis Bebey, Pierre Akendenque and other innovators out of Africa, then this album will find you drifting in the same stream. Just as Philip Glass and Steve Reich have done in America, the Pan African Orchestra seeks to find the territory that lies between tradition and new creativity, taking the rhythms and instruments of all of African and merging them into a new whole.

The PAO is based in Ghana, a traditional home to pan-African political and cultural movements that date back to the fifties, so it was a perfectly natural occurrence that this ensemble should come into existence here. Founder and director Nana Danso Abiam sought to break the colonial strong hold on his country's national orchestra, and failing that, decided to create a new on using the sanza, the drum, the flutes and strings of many African cultures in a new way, as a compositional tool for new music in the same way most western classical traditions use ensembles.

The music is anything but the usual classical music of the west, however. It is a genuinely African music, based not only on the traditions and instruments, but on the contemporary cultural experience. There is not only the skill and discipline that mark any great orchestra, there is also a vital creativity in both the composition and execution of this music. There are hints of European music from the 18th and 19th centuries, but they are transient and only mark the music as universal rather than colonial. The real heart of the music is the heart of the nations it comes from, the striving for unity that is the root of pan-Africanism.