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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El Cultural(Spain) interviews Cameroonian saxophonist Manu Dibango.

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Robin Denselow reviews Manu Dibango's concert at the Barbican, London.

Manu Dibango began with an announcement in broken English. "I'm still as in love with music as 50 years before," he proclaimed, and that ought to have marked the start of a classic concert. He is, after all, an undisputed legend for followers of anything from world music to jazz, funk and the whole host of other styles that have taken his fancy over the years. Now 73, he was back in London to celebrate both the 50th anniversary of his life as a professional musician and the launch of a new live CD and DVD, Lion of Africa, recorded in this same hall back in the autumn of 2004. The album of that last Barbican show, which featured special guests including Baaba Maal and Courtney Pine, showed that it was a patchy but often rousing occasion.
This latest concert, which featured no special guests, was merely patchy. It was a pleasant, breezy and thoroughly professional show that demonstrated Dibango's range of styles, but which switched constantly between the almost impressive and the gently soporific, often within the same song. It sounded at times as if a bunch of very classy musicians were having fun on stage, but weren't bothering too much about their audience. As for Manu Dibango himself, he clearly enjoyed himself, but never made this seem like a special occasion. A charming, cool, and (considering his age) remarkably sprightly figure with a bald pate and dark glasses, he swapped between saxophone, marimba and vocals almost as often as his music switched styles. He is famous for being unpredictable, so it was perhaps to be expected that only three of the songs he performed appear on the new album, and these of course included his signature tune, Soul Makossa. The variety was impressive - but he still acted like a great musician on autopilot. Read More

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