Musique De Nuit (Six Degrees, 2015)
Sharing song composition duties Malian kora master Ballake Sissoko and French cellist Vincent Segal pour enough charm into their latest collaboration Musique de Nuit or Night Music to coax the moon out from behind the clouds.
Following up on their 2010 collaborative effort Chamber Music, Mr. Sissoko and Mr. Segal conjure up a sound fashioned out of the West African tradition of troubadour songs and that of the western classical tradition of Baroque music. Infinitely lovely and eloquently innovative, Musique de Nuit bubbles up dreamy, evocative and sharply expressive musical landscapes.
“Chamber Music is where it started. But all we’ve done together since then has reinforced our collaboration. And this is where we are now, the two of us together,” explains Mr. Segal.
Crafting a tapestry of rhythm and melody on both kora and cello, Mr. Sissoko and Mr. Segal daringly step out on a collaboration that speaks not only of Mali’s musical traditions and that of classical structures, but also offers up intriguing flashes of jazz.
Mr. Segal notes, “It’s actually a bit husky, and raw. There are out-of-tune notes and fingernails crack sometimes, but there’s a sort of activity between us in those moments that I love.”
Opening with a sweet interplay of kora and cello, “Niandou” shimmers with invocative colors. Delving into the dark dreamy opening of “Passa Quatro” before giving way to jazzy sympathies, Mr. Sissoko and Mr. Segal find the elegant way to transition a piece and give way for the other musician. Musique de Nuit is full of charms like “Balazando,” “N’Kapalema” and the utterly stunning “Diabaro” with vocalist Babani Kone. One could easily see this CD appealing to African music fans, jazz fans and classical fans, especially with flourishes found on tracks like “Super Etoile,” the delicate interplay of “Prelude” or the lacy workings of title track “Musique de Nuit.”
Mr. Segal explains Musique de Nuit’s inspiration this way, “Night is a special time in Mali. It’s a little less hot, and everyone’s asleep apart from the night owls like us. The city’s not as noisy, music mixes with rumor, and there’s something redeeming about simply sitting outside and playing. That’s what we tried to capture here, that freedom the night can bring.”
Musique de Nuit is eloquently innovative, crisply contemporary and masterful.
Purchase Musique De Nuit
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
