Seckou Keita, 22 Strings

There is a West African legend, an oral history about the origins of the kora, a many-stringed harp with a highly developed instrumental practice centered around it. According to the story, back many centuries ago the spirits of the savannah constructed the first kora and gave it to the griot Jali Mady Wuleng, who mastered it and gained renown. The original instrument had 22 strings, so the story goes. When Wuleng died his fellow griots took up the instrument but removed one string in his memory. And so the instrument thenceforth was standardized with its 21 strings. But the 22-stringed kora tradition lived on in its place of origin, southern Senegal and northern Guinea.

Seckou Keita is a living master of this, the 22-string kora. He is a griot in an illustrious line of professional traditional musicians of southern Senegal and the heir to the 22-string kora tradition. The CD 22 Strings (ARC EUCD2585) gives us a full program of his solo playing, at times enhanced by his ornate and very musical vocals.

The kora music tradition of West Africa is highly developed, as anyone familiar with it will attest. The best players rival in technique and artistry some of the finest instrumentalists in the world. Seckou Keita exemplifies that tradition. He is a master among masters. The ten pieces on the album are mostly compositions of his own making; a few are traditional. His playing shows the highly evolved, ornate style to perfection. The tradition often calls for the counterpoint of an ostinato pattern and a ornate solo style in the second line, and when called for a third vocal line added atop all that.

Seckou Keita has fully absorbed that tradition and gives us some of the most involved solo work of any contemporary master. At times there is less of the ostinato and more in an expressive fanfare-like virtuosity. Other times he locks into a strong riffing groove and uses the entire range of the instrument to express all that he feels.

It is an extremely well-recorded album that showcases his mastery in great depth and with a fullness that puts him at the forefront of world virtuosity. But make no mistake, this is African music to the core, with a rhythmic and melodic vitality that has deep roots yet also shoots highly upward with a fully branched trunk of great beauty, so to speak.

It is a very stunning album that must be heard by anyone with ears to hear it. All those who appreciate great string playing will fall under its spell. It is absolutely stunning! Seckou Keita should not be missed!

Modou Toure & Ramon Goose, The West African Blues Project

Senegalese music master Modou Toure and British blues guitarist Ramon Goose create a very hip melding of stylistic universes on their album The West African Blues Project (ARC Music EUCD 2591). It is a very engaging and successful on all levels, combining the West African folk and Afrobeat grooves with traditional percussion plus drums, bass, and the fine blues-rock-Afro guitar work of Goose, in a rootsy blues meets contemporary African style. Toure handles the vocals and percussion throughout and is exceptionally strong, with overdubbed call-and-response segments and impressive lead vocalizing. Each song has much going for it. There are no fillers.

Toure comes out of the legacy of the Toure Kunda band. His father is Ousmane Toure. Goose made an impact on the UK blues scene as a member of NuBlues and went on to produce some acclaimed blues albums in the US.

The music is a cooperative venture, with the compositions showing strong African foundations and the blues element sometimes coming to the forefront, other times an underlying constant via the magnetic Goose guitar style.

It all works in impressive, moving ways. The grooves are irresistible and the blues element is a natural fit with the West African contemporary orientation. The two talents fashion a music that puts a smile on your face and makes you want to move. Very cool, indeed!

Jalilah's Raks Sharki, Stage Cuts, Modern Egyptian Dance Music

If you know the music of the mid-east well enough, you do not need to be told that Egypt has a fine tradition of mid-eastern large band music (Oum Kaltsoum's band comes to mind) that when done well is irresistible. The bands of this sort have a vibrant percussion section, an oud or two and other plucked stringed instruments, perhaps a piano and string bass, reeds and a flute perhaps, and a violin section. Then of course there is usually a lead vocalist or two and backup singers.

If it is the real thing there is the traditional tuning of the orchestra which differs slightly from standard Western tuning. And the arrangements are highly developed.

A modern updating of this sound that keeps to the essentials of the style in exciting ways can be heard on the recent album by Jalilah's Raks Sharki. The album is called Stage Cuts.

It has all the elements described above and a pronounced rhythmic underpinning that makes it very much music for dance (but no, it sounds nothing like disco or the modern equivalent).

This is excellent music that brings out all that makes the style a joy to hear. It grooves like nothing else quite does.

Get with this one!

Wired for Sound, Mozambique

Contemporary Afrobeat/new African music from Mozambique comes to us nicely in a mobile unit anthology of artists and music from the north of the country recorded on location over two months for the Open Society Initiative of Southern Africa. Wired for Sound, Mozambique (Freshlyground) presents 17 of those tracks, covering zouk, traditional sounds, electric grooves and a little African rap.

The sound quality is excellent, the performances inspired for the most part. It gives you an excellent picture of the music scene there now. It is a mix of traditional and electric instruments, vocalizing songwriters, choirs and bands.

And yes what's going on there as far as electric guitar and bass playing can be readily heard in a holistic context. We've come a long ways from the early folk-highlife sounds of early-to-mid last century. Everything grooves and has integrity, a drive that is African and a bluesy demeanor that appeals.

If you want to know what's up there now, this gives you an excellent leg up on it all. And it is a joy to hear.

Lili Boniche, Trésors de la Musique Judéo-Arabe

As a novice to Lili Boniche (1921-2008) and his art, I listened to the World Village reissue (with extra cuts) of his classic album Trésors de la Musique Judéo-Arabe (World Village 479094) without knowing exactly what I was hearing. But I got onto its wavelength quickly enough.

Lili was a popular vocalist who combined the Judeo-Arab-Andalusion roots of his Algerian homeland with modern Western elements. The result is a very attractive mix of Latin dance forms (rumba, tango), the introduction of Western instruments (piano, clarinet) and modern elements with traditional Algerian song for a music of the cabaret. It's the music you were somewhat likely to hear in Casablanca at the cabaret clubs in the mid-century, Rick's American Cafe notwithstanding.

There are songs with more of a traditional element and those more modernized, but throughout this is music that stimulates and entertains as it also fascinates in its early east-west fusion.

I recommend it strongly. Listen for some beautiful vocalizing, some nice oud in the orchestra, some hot east-west clarinet, other excellent instrumentalizing, and the arrangements!

Bibi Tanga, Now

From the Central African Republic comes guitarist-singer Bibi Tanga. His album Now (World Village) gives us a nicely different spin on afrobeat-afropop today. There is a song-orientation that works very well via the memorable tunes from the Tanga song trove represented in these grooves.

And there is groove underneath it, plus a social awareness of things in his native homeland that invites comparison to seminal others that came before. Nevertheless this is Tanga doing things his way. His guitar may not often take center stage but he bears close listening in his rhythm-charged playing style. And his vocals are spot-on.

The music covers the spectrum of eclectic soul-infused possibilities, all with a strongly wry twist that makes Bibi Tanga an artist of originality and dynamic presence. This is the first on his own. Before he was a key member of Malka Family and others; he shows us on Now that he is best served up as the main entree.

Good music!

Mamani Keïta, Kanou

The contemporary world of African music is exploding. Strong traditions unite with electricity lately on a series of albums that are nothing short of extraordinary. We've dealt with several here in the past year and there is another I must tell you about. Mamani Keïta, a fully nuanced singer in the best of African vocal arts traditions, hailing from Mali, has put together a group that combines West African traditional instruments, such as the stringed ngoni (played beautifully by Moriba Koita) and percussion, with the electricity of bass guitar and the spectacularly right-on electric guitar of Djeli Moussa Kouyaté.

All this on her latest album Kanou (World Village).

The combination of the natural bluesiness of the tradition, the call-and-response vocals and the strong groove conjoins with a rock-blues presence that is near irresistible.

Ms. Keïta sings with complete command and authority. The band takes control of the groove in ways that reminds us that musical Africa has always been and remains central to the world's music. In the updated electric versions all the power of tradition remains but the added jolt of modern wattage gives us a new map of what is possible. Highlife was one way that Africa connected with the world, Afrobeat was another. Whatever you may call this new synthesis, when it's done as excellently as it is here, it is calling to us, reminding us of our universal homeland and what has beautifully become of it in music.

Excellent album! Very recommended.

Mario Adnet, Um Olhar Sobre Villa-Lobos

This album has some nice guitar work on it but that is not its primary function. Composer Villa-Lobos wrote masterpieces for the guitar. But this album is more in line with a re-arrangement of some beautiful Villa-Lobos for a Brazilian popular mode. There's a full orchestra, some samba touches with percussion and whatnot, some nice guitar parts, and vocals that fit into the bossa-samba saudade feel.

It is Mario Adnet in charge. The album is Um Olhar Sobre Villa-Lobos. Of course Villa-lobos wrote music so Brazilian that the music survives this transposition not only well, you would think it was made for this treatment. In a way it was.

I can't say enough good things about this music and the arrangements and performances. They haunt. It is a blockbuster of lyric and vibrantly rhythmic Braziliana. Beautiful.

Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis

Dudu Tassa is that most unusual of phenomena, an artist with a natural ability to synthesize his musical roots. He has been long a popular commodity in Israel. For this, his Kuwaiti project, he combines a rock and contemporary Jewish sensibility with his ancestral roots in Iraqi Jewish music. His grandfather and grand-uncle were famous composers of Iraqi music in the '30s and '40s.

Dudu looks backward at those roots and converts them to a music of today in Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis (Rock Paper Scissors CD & DVD).

A DVD of interviews and concert footage supplements and makes you very open for the excellent CD that maps it all out in sound for you. What's remarkable is how he captures with musicians and vocalists the traditional early 20th-century mid-eastern music with a modern sometimes pretty heavy rock rhythm section and electric guitar--Dudu plays the often electric guitar and sings most of the lead vocals that have the mid-eastern melisma and all the nuances of the age-old musics, ornate instrumental playing on traditional instruments, yet the drive and freshness of rock today.

It's rather incredible music. Many promise synthesis out there. Dudu Tassa delivers, with the soul of a true artist and all the excitement and attraction such a combination of musical elements should give you. Dudu delivers with all you might hope for--and the results are magical.

Do not hesitate. Grab this one!

Hassan Hakmoun, Unity

Traditional Gnawa music from Morocco has something to it that is hard to resist. The three-stringed bass instrument called the sintir sets up riff ostinatos, a group of percussionists get with the groove and there are solo vocals and response choruses with plenty of soul.

It now seems inevitable that such a music would find someone to update the music by fusing it with riff-bluesy rock. Hassan Hakmoun, excellent sintir player and vocalist, has electrified his instrument, added metal-blues guitar and rock-funk drums to the mix and created a hybrid music that works completely.

You can hear it to excellent advantage on his latest album, Unity (Healing Records). The album goes from strength-to-strength in an unending string of movingly hip numbers. Anyone with the ears for Afro-groove and hard rock-blues will be drawn into this one right away, I would think, like I was.

It is a music of great excitement! Go with it!

Alejandro Almenares, Casa De Trova, Cuba 50's

Cuban music has been such an important force in the development of the modern Latin style of dance music today. We sometimes forget that this music has roots that go way back.

Today's two-CD set by Cuban tres guitar player Alejandro Almenares, Casa De Trova, Cuba 50's (Tumi 228), helps us get acclimated with some beautiful son ensemble classics, played with real zest and style.

Alejandro, now 76 years old, was born into the music. His father Angel was the founder of La Casa De Trova, a well-known Cuban music nightspot, and one of Cuba's most celebrated troubadors. Alejandro took up the tres guitar at an early age and inherited the music and culture of his father, adding to it and keeping it all vivid and very alive.

He still plays at the Casa De Trova and no doubt puts on a wonderful show. The album at hand puts him in the context of his band, with rhythm guitar, percussion, of course the tres, backup vocals and lead vocals.

The first disk goes through the 13 songs as instrumentals with response-style backup vocals only, so you can really hear Alejandro's tres style, in a way a synthesis of what full ensembles would do with piano and horns and still do today. The second disk takes those same songs and adds the lead vocals.

There's no feeling of redundancy because the music appeals either as instrumentals or as vocals and so you just let the music take you where it does. Alejandro is a revelation and a wonder to hear. Everybody gets that spirit and goes with it.

I am thrilled to hear the music and very happy I have a copy of it all to return to. Very much recommended.

KiT, Tambutronic

Curacao, the Caribbean island off the Venezuelan coast, is home for the group KiT (Kuenta i Tambu), a group that does a remarkable kind of dance music called jiga. They give us a very, a very intensely concentrated set of such sounds on their US debut Tambutronic (Jiga Musica).

Now this is not the sort of music I would ordinarily cover. It has some relation to hard-core house and hip-hop, but then there's a very Afro-Carib flavor to it that puts it way over the top for me. The female lead singer half-sings and half-raps much of the time, but in a way much more Carib-Afro than hip-hop.

The tracks feature very hip electronic beats with a mix of sampled and live instruments. It grooves irresistibly to the extent that it totally won me over. This is music that overwhelms. Either you surrender wholly to it or you really have to leave the room. That's how it hits you.

There are aspects of it that remind me of zouk, but much harder-edged, and much more Afro-based. For you guitar fans, sorry to say there aren't any here. It's music you should check out though. It is music of a very sensual sort--the lyrics suggest things once you understand them and some of those things are naughty. Lyrics are secondary though. It's the sound of the vocals and the rhythmic r-bomb of the whole thing that utterly kills.

Whew!

Mulatu Astatke, Sketches of Ethiopia

The anthology Ethiopiques woke many of us up, myself included, to how hip the funky Ethiopian version of Afrobeat/Afrojazz was. And now as we contemplate a new year I am glad to say that new Ethiopian music in this vein is emerging afresh.

Mulatu Astatke has a good one out on Jazz Village (570015) that's called Sketches of Ethiopia. As I listen again while writing up the review this morning I revel in it. Good Ethiopian music of this sort tends to keep bluesy and harmonic minor tonalities intact and puts a hip AfroBeat combination of the tribal and the groove overtop. With the Ethiopian version of this kind of groove there's a bit less of the James Brown influence and just a bit more of the jazz lineage there. So it is with Maestro Astatke; in fact he is even more jazz-oriented here than what you might have heard on Ethiopiques. You hear indigenous stringed instruments rub shoulders with jazz horns, piano, electric bass and drums, grooving down on what is at the base very Ethiopian but then very jazzed as well--with solo time as well as basic feel involved.

Astatke goes back a ways. He collaborated with Duke Ellington, I read on the net. I am not sure I know of that as far as recordings go, but I would certainly want to hear it if it exists out there based on this album! He's been around as percussionist and composer but this is his first album on a well-distributed label. There are some assorted vocals now and then and they are cool. The music speaks in whatever they do here. Don't hesitate!

Zohar's Nigun, The Four Questions

What is the world? We know literally of course. But "World Music" is what exactly? It's the world but maybe not your world. Or maybe it is. It's non-WASP music? Usually, yes. It's one of those categories we get stuck with in music but it has some utility. Today we have a quartet that plays music with a Jewish tinge, music with a tonality and phrasing not expressly Western (read WASP-ern?) but nowadays of course very much a part of the "West" as is the African-American strain of music, or, for that matter, to a much less extent, the influence of the Shakers.

Jewish music and Jewish life are of course very much alive in the States and the broader culture has been much enriched by that. So this is a part of a musical tradition that remains active and constantly moving forward while keeping traditions as well. Its influence and presence is thriving in the world I occupy, centered around New York City as I am.

So the music of the quartet Zohar's Nigun, specifically the album The Four Questions (Rectify Records), does not sound exotic to me. It does sound very good. The quartet taps into traditional Jewish melody and dance and combines that with jazz. It's not Klezmer. It is thoroughly contemporary in the way it commingles the elements together. It even gets avant now and again.

The quartet: Daniel Weltlinger on violin, Daniel Pliner on piano, Simon Milman on acoustic bass, and Alon Ilsar at the drums. Pliner's piano playing shows a thorough jazz schooling and he voices and does solo runs that make for an excellent sort of synthesis. Daniel Weltlinger's violin has a very direct Jewishness to it and also classical training. He is a phenomena, surely. And he sounds wonderful.

The rhythm section gets right where they need to be with old dance forms and jazz today combined.

It is music of much interest. There are some beautiful treatments of themes, getting an avant aspect into it all, a new music aspect, a larger encompassing of elements than would be expected if this was according to a formula.

I find it quite moving and heartily embrace it. Anyone who finds traditional Jewish and modern improvisational strains a welcome mix will no doubt feel as I do after listening a few times. I do not doubt. And if you have no idea what such a combination could be like, get a copy and experiment. It's good for you!

Ciro Hurtado, Los Angeles Blues

When something works, you stop thinking about what it is, sometimes, and just enjoy it. Nylon string guitarist Ciro Hurtado and his Los Angeles Blues (Inti) does that for me.

The Spanish guitar heritage as modified, rethought and made new in Latin America is what gets a loving transformation in Maestro Hurtado's hands.

He is a beautiful guitarist! And he takes tradition and makes a contemporary melding with the forward moving instrumentaility of modern strains from the band Oregon to Latin jazz guitarists and onwards. Do NOT think this is a new age smarm. It is most excellent guitar music!

Very recommended.

Diabel Cissokho, Kanabory Siyama

Great African kora players have something about them that we American continent folks respond to very readily. Or at least I do. The West African stringed instrument in the right hands has a bluesy complexity, a virtuoso soulfulness that fits in well with the jazz, blues, rock and such that have filled our heads for so many years.

Diabel Cissokho surely is one of those players. A member of the Cissokho Griot lineage, he grew up in Dakar and eventually came to master the grand tradition of the kora. His new album Kanabory Siyama (World Village) shows the fruit of the labor, along with excellent singing by Diabel and chorus, a traditional percussion accompaniment and the punch of an electric bass.

And what results is music of magic! He's a player we can all learn something from. His music we can all be thrilled by--if you are disposed in the first place or even if you don't know about this.

I studied with a prominent classical-Western percussionist many years ago. During a lesson he remarked that one of his students was very lucky because he was discovering Beethoven's late quartets for the first time. Well, now, if you discover great kora music for the first time (via this excellent album) you are equally lucky!

Paste the following URL in your browser and get sounds and words from Diabel directly. http://www.worldvillagemusic.com/#/albums?view=images&id=1614

Terakaft, Kel Tamasheq

If you like a groove and you dig the blues, you are halfway to liking comtemporary African music. That is, especially in the hands of Terakaft, an electric-trad amalgam that takes traditional Tuareg Shaharan music, adds electric guitars and bass in place of the traditional stringed instruments, and rocks out!

The new one Kel Tamasheq (World Village) is as good or even better than the last. The vocals have soul in the Tuareg definition, and the riffing sounds absolutely hip on electric instruments. They've of course listened to blues and rock and found a way to hit hard with tradition and modernity hand-in-hand.

This is neigh irresistible. It will give guitarists and their friends a real jolt and keep everybody in the pocket who has ears and heart. Don't miss it!

Anna Estrada, Volando

World citizen and jazz vocalist Anna Estrada returns for a new recording up today: Volando (First Flight Productions FFP 003). Arranger Ray Scott and a shifting array of musicians give Anna a hiply Latin-jazzed carpet over which she gives out with a pleasing medley of Latin and songbook-rock standards.

She has a straightforward but nuanced vocal instrument which is shown to very good advantage here. The songs range from "Wild is the Wind" to Lennon and McCartney's "Happiness is a Warm Gun/I Want You." Then there are the always-nice-to-hear-done-well Latin gems like "Mais Que Nada".

This is not a record to set the world on fire, particularly. But it is very, very nice. Latin Jazz crossover listeners take note.

Sandra Nkake, Nothing for Granted

Sandra Nkake sings her own brand of soul, drawing on African roots freely, coming up with a blend all her own. Nothing for Granted (Jazz Village) showcases her music in moving ways. She has a distinctive vocal sound and her songs are equally singular. It's music of protest, love, intelligence.

It draws on soul roots but takes them in a new place, like Sade before, only as original and compelling in its own way.

This is music that cannot be easily described, except to say that it's Sandra Nkake music. Hear it!

Mandingo Ambassadors, Tougna

Engine Records usually covers avant jazz, but they've got a kicking Afrobeat CD out, the Mandingo Ambassadors doing Tougna (Engine 047).

There's a rockingly hip foundation of electric bass, drums and conga-percussion, on top of which are some very hip guitarists, one who solos with style and facility. There are two wind players who can solo with plenty of credibility as well. Then there's the lead singer, Bebe Camara, who has the highlife-and-beyond style covered with soul. Mamady Kouyate is leader and one of the guitarists.

It's a West African sound, tempered by some of the classic Mid-African highlife classics. This is music that moves! A great record to get the party going, even if it's a party in your head.