Friday, August 08, 2008

Gogol Bordello: Start Wearing Purple


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Oliver Mtukudzi


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Kaissa

The Emancipation Support Committee (ESC) has contracted the beautiful Cameroon singer Kaissa to perform in this country for this year’s celebrations. The Paris-based artiste who performs in her native language will be on stage at the Jean Pierre Complex in Port-of-Spain on July 31 at 8 pm.

According to Roxanne Colthrust of the ESC Kaissa has been in the spotlight for many years hence the reason she is being invited to perform here. “A package of beautiful music, beautiful voice and a great band is what the people of TT will get with this concert,” Colthrust said. She adds that Kaissa is a dynamic, honest and impressive performer who can easily charm her audience. She will share the stage with Lebo M of Lion King fame.

Colthrust indicated that Kaissa was born in Cameroon, Africa, and moved with her family to Paris when she was 13. She is very familiar to fans of African music in New York, which has been her home base since 1996.

Her endearing personality, passionate performances, and alluring voice combined with vivacious intensity has earned her a rapidly growing fan club. Besides touring and recording as a back-up singer with well-known African artistes like Salif Keita, Manu Dibango, Cesaria Evora, Kasse Mady and Papa Wemba, Kaissa also has worked with French pop star CharlElie Couture, multimedia artiste, musician Jean-Michel Jarre who is well-known to Trinidad, and American stars Martha Wash and Diana Ross.

Colthrust, who has had the opportunity to take in Kaissa’s performance, said that she is surrounded by a group of world-class musicians and she has been able to attract a great deal of attention with her music, particularly for the people of the African diaspora.

Her debut album, Looking There was released in March 2004 by Sony Music in South Africa and received rave reviews for its highly engaging vocals and pulsating African/Western rhythmic backdrops. Success breeds success, and Looking There has led Kaïssa to the next level, with featured slots on three Putumayo compilations including ‘‘Global Soul’’, ‘‘World Reggae’’ and ‘‘Women of Africa’’. Her riveting performance at the XVI Africa Festival in Würzburg Germany in May, 2004 led critics to dub her “One of the future great voices of Africa”.
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Habib Koité

Bonnie Raitt knows a thing or two about soulful guitarists, so when she declared that Mali's Habib Koité deserves consideration alongside legendary ax masters, even music fans who pay little attention to West African sounds took note.

"First there was Hendrix, then Stevie Ray Vaughan, and now Habib," said Raitt, who invited Koité to perform on her 2002 album "Silver Lining." "With his combination of chops and soul, he's the most amazing guitarist I've heard in years."

Koité, who opens a four-night run at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley on Thursday with his longtime band Bamada, has been making North American inroads for the past decade. He's released a series of gorgeous albums on Putumayo World Music, World Village, and, most recently, label/presenter Cumbancha (2007's "Afriki"), honing a gorgeous, lapidary sound built on traditional Malian instruments such as the gourd percussion calabash, xylophone-like balafon, and kora, a 21-string harp.
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Thursday, August 07, 2008

Interview with Gustavo Santaolalla

Interview with Bajofondo's leader Gustavo Santaolalla.
Don't call Bajofondo a revisionist tango band anymore or you'll raise the back hairs of its leader, Gustavo Santaolalla. The band, whose name loosely translates to "below the surface," is an eight-member ensemble of South American musicians who have created a generational language that fuses Latin alternative rock with the rich musical blends that thrive along the Argentine-Uruguayan border.

"We don't like the label 'electronic tango,' " Santaolalla says in Spanish. "What we do is a mixture of music that draws from the influences along the Rio de la Plata (the river that forms part of the border between Argentina and Uruguay), and tango is a part of that, along with milonga and candombe, but then you have what the rest of the band brings to it that adds elements of rock, electronica and hip-hop."
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The Rough Guide To The Music Of Mali

Bruce Elder reviews The Rough Guide To The Music Of Mali.
The music of Mali has everything. Compulsive, mesmerising modern rhythms (Amadou & Mariam's La Realite), sweet traditional ballads (Habib Koite & Bamada's Mali Ba and Rokia Traore's Kanan Neni), glorious finely plucked African stringed instruments (gasp at Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate's Simbo), the roots of the blues (Afel Bocoum's sonorous Ali Farka), exciting ensembles from clubs and dance halls (Babani Kone's Djeli Baba) and the rap rebel sounds of the desert revolutionaries (Tinariwen's Arawan).
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