So Many Ways to Get Your African Groove On

A jazz musician friend of mine once told me that he didn’t like African music because he found it unsophisticated. From that statement, I could only conclude that he hadn’t heard enough African music, a fact confirmed when I asked him what African artists he listened to and he was unable to articulate so much as one name. He had second thoughts after hearing a few CDs I loaned him for the purpose of changing his mind. The whole thing got me to thinking about how staggeringly diverse music from the African continent can be, to the point where the very phrase “African music” sounds generalized to a state of near meaninglessness. But it’s there and I’ll do my bit to give it boost with my opinions on a stylistically wide swath of recent African and African-related releases.

Former Zap Mama singer Sally Nyolo has a good one with Tiger Run (Riverboat Records, 2014). The deftly-timed and intricately entrancing bikutsi style of vocalizing heard in her native Cameroon is here fused with arrangements that reach further to include soukous-smooth guitar and rolling percussion that makes for a sound you’d be correct in calling pan-African even as particular styles are clarified on some tracks. Only an artist of Nyolo’s talent could pull off the jump from softly swaying balladry (the title song) to Zulu-seasoned trance (“Eeeh,” a much better song than the title would suggest) to a loopy jab at show business (“Welcome”) to Francophone sensuality (“Elle Regarde Passer”), and that’s only the wonders of tracks 3 thru 6. All the 10 tunes are decisive winners, thanks to the many moods of Nyolo’s remarkable vocal range and her knack for making it sound at home anywhere in Africa or the world.

 

 

A differently penetrating sort of voice belongs to Mauritania’s Noura Mint Seymali, who sings with an undulating fervor that shows her Saharan roots and something of a wilder side on Tzenni (Glitter Beat, 2014). Seymali testifies like a rocker and likewise plucks the jinn out of her ardine lute while guitar, bass and drum set provide zesty backdrops and a tightness that seems barely of this earth. If you’re looking for the softly swaying, desert-meditating music common to so much of North Africa, forget it. This stuff kicks hard enough to knock all preconceived notions out of your ears. And you’ll find the experience quite invigorating.

Staying with the ladies, I must admit I wasn’t all that keen on Rise Again (Shanachie, 2014), the latest by South Africa’s Lira. She can sing for sure, but on this disc tends to push the African roots to the rear while keeping more of a pop/R & B feel out front. It’s not bad, but the songs feel lightweight even when the subject matter leans serious and the whole thing is pleasant rather than truly satisfying.

 

 

But of course I’m not saying that R & B in an African setting is bad. If you need convincing, give a listen Slim Ali and the Hodi Boys, who formed in Kenya in 1968 but were more interested in the soul sounds coming out of the U.S. On 70s Soul!(ARC Music, 2014), you can hear the influence of such singers as Percy Sledge in Slim Ali’s tell-it-like-it-is vocals and the boys in the band likewise create sounds closer to what musicians in Detroit and Memphis were doing a few decades ago. A little psychedelic, mostly ballad-driven and heavy on the peace and love lyricism that defined musical eras in places you’d think of more readily than Africa, this charming time capsule is a nice surprise. There’s reportedly a companion volume called 70s Pop that I’m sure is good too.

 

 

If you want to go a traditional route, go with Morocco’s Simo Lagnawi and his album The Gnawa Berber (Riverboat Records, 2014).There are few things that can rival ritual Gnawa trance music for pure mind alteration, and this disc is loaded with it. Clattering circular percussion rhythms provide the backdrop for the bass tones of the anchoring three-stringed guembri lute that Lagnawi plucks with a madman’s intensity and a healer’s heart. In fact, he plays everything except for guest fiddle, flute and banjo on one track each. Call-and-response vocal patterns, precisely skittering beats, well placed instrumental touches and unrelenting intensity make this the best Gnawa-centered release in a long time and one of the best ever. Highly recommended.

 

 

After being receptively jarred by Noura Mint Seymali’s album and possibly in need of a more familiar sound from the same general direction, slip into the new Boubacar Traore disc Mbalimaou (Lusafrica, 2014). Modernizing of studio technology in Mali has only made the acoustic sound of this African blues master as uncompromising as ever. Traore’s perfectly aged voice and likewise unspoiled crystalline guitar are the center, usually urged on by percussion and at times laced with harmonica and traditional string textures of the n’goni, kora or soku. There’s a higher quotient of (relatively speaking) more upbeat pieces than on Traore’s last few broodier discs, making this a superb cycle of songs simply but richly sprinkled with exquisitely warm swaths of unplugged glory on which glide the vocals and guitar of a man who’s always good but exceptional here. You must get this one.

 

 

Also starting from a foundation of guitar, this time by Burkina Faso axe wizard Abdoulaye Traore (that ever-venerable surname) and vocals from Malian griot Mohamed Diaby, the duo known as Debademba shine on Souleymane (World Village, 2013). Not staunchly traditional by any means but still mainly acoustic in scope, these gents are joined by a few electric instrumentalists and even strings in the pensive moments, going easily from moodier songs to upbeat movers. I’m reminded of the way Salif Keita sounded when he started going experimental, and by that I mean I like this disc. A lot.

 

 

Rising Malian guitar great Vieux Farka Toure once again teams with Israeli keyboardist Idan Raichel to record as The Toure-Raichel Collective on their latest, The Paris Session. Like their previous The Tel Aviv Session, the sound here is free flowing Afro-jazz with acoustic guitar and piano as the main components and bass and calabash providing a rhythmic core around which Toure and Raichel trade off inspired riffs and tasty flourishes without ever overplaying. The collective expands a bit here, adding guest vocals, trumpet, flute and n’goni, congas where there was previously only gourd drum in the percussion section, plus Raichel bringing in some electric keyboards. This is the best sort of follow up album, sporting the relaxed virtuosity that marked the first disc and expanding it with a few modern touches and additional sounds. Pieces like the dreamy-but-focused instrumental “Allassal Terey” sound like they could go on forever, and you almost wish they would. A grand and glorious album, as spiritual as the hamza symbol clutched by the two main players in the liner photo.

 

 

And of course, it’s not just music coming straight out of Africa that matters. Consider as well what African music has spawned, including the Fela Kuti-pioneered Afrobeat style that a number of bands worldwide have picked up on. Brooklyn’s Zongo Junction call themselves a “psychedelic Afrobeat band” and they prove it with No Discount (Electric Cowbell Records, 2014). They’ve got the rock-solid, militant polyrhythms down, their horns blast with an energy that’s right in your face where it belongs and they’re not afraid to stretch a tune out for maximum effect. As for the psychedelic component, yes, their keyboards in particular seem geared more toward space flight than what you usually hear in Afrobeat, and the mix (mainly by band guitarist Mikey Freedom Hart) splashes and echoes into the farthest reaches of your mind as your body dances in defiance of all the forces that try to keep it still. Topflight instrumental Afrobeat, marred only by a couple of unnecessarily noisy interludes.