Echoes of the Land

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Afel Bocoum and Alkibar: Tabital Pulaaku

Robin Denselow reviews "Tabital Pulaaku"

Bocoum is a charming, easygoing man and he uses his songs to express his views on anything from the dangers of illegal immigration to Europe to the treatment of Mali's Peul people, the continuing power of voodoo, or the liberal trends in African Islam ("We thanks God today because girls are permitted to wear the long-forbidden skirt"). This is an album on which the lyrics are as important as the music.

Goran Bregovic: Welcome to Bregovic

Robin Denselow reviews Goran Bregovic's Welcome to Bregovic.

The Gypsy brass is in evidence, of course, on tracks like Gas Gas Gas, taken from the Alkohol album and featuring DJ Shantel, but it's matched against fine, drifting choral works like Mesecina Moonlight or the orchestral Underground Tango. Then there are collaborations with a remarkable variety of other musicians, which include a stately track from the Turkish diva Sezen Aksu, a laidback ballad from Scott Walker, and an easy-going, understated song from Cape Verdean star Cesaria Evora. Best of all there's In the Death Car, with slinky, half-spoken vocals from Iggy Pop matched against both choir and brass.

Maria de Barros: Interview

The vast distance between the Old World and the new isn't merely a matter of miles. Immigrant communities can share the language, music and customs of their homeland, but the harsh realities of the old country often start to fade as people put down roots in the United States. Listening to the buoyant, often celebratory music of Los Angeles-based Cape Verdean singer Maria de Barros and the ache-filled mornas of her famous godmother, Cesaria Evora, it's clear that while the two artists are united by a common culture, America's affluence and West Africa's poverty have set their music on divergent paths.

"Cesaria's life is a morna," de Barros says, referring to the blueslike musical form popular in Cape Verde's bars and cantinas. "This is someone who has suffered a lot, and now, thank God, she has been given everything she merits. My life is a completely different picture than hers."

De Barros celebrates the release of her gorgeous new album Morabeza with a series of Northern California gigs, including a Zookbeat concert at Don Quixote's this Tuesday and a show at the Big Sur Spirit Garden on Saturday, May 30. It was Evora who introduced the world to the music of Cape Verde in the early 1990s with her ineffably graceful, minor-key songs describing lives of hardship, heartbreak and anguished longing for absent loved ones. The morna is much like the blues in its heroic transcendence of hard times, but strongly inflected by the rhythms and cadences of West Africa, Brazil and Portugal, the colonial power in Cape Verde until 1975.

Endemic poverty on the island nation off the coast of Senegal has forced generations of Cape Verdeans to seek work far from home. One of the largest expatriate settlements is in Rhode Island, which is where de Barros settled with her family as a child. Born in Senegal and raised in Mauritania, she moved with her parents to Providence at the age of 11, joining a thriving, close-knit community.

She struck up a close friendship with Evora on a trip back to Cape Verde in 1988. When people asked if de Barros was the great singer's daughter, "She finally said, 'You know what? I'm your godmother,'" de Barros says. "'You baptize children and you never know how they come out. If I had to choose a godchild, I would choose someone like you. I know exactly how you are.'"

Khaled: Liberté

Robin Denselow reviews Khaled's Liberté

The most popular performer in the Arab world is still extending his range. Khaled, the "king of Rai", became a celebrity across Europe and the Middle East in the early 1990s, provoking scenes worthy of Beatlemania with songs that matched the rousing dance music of Algeria with western influences that included a swirling layer of synthesisers. His last album Ya-Rayi, five years ago, showed his growing interest in acoustic styles, and this new improved set takes the process further.

Emmanuel Jal: Interview

Fiona Purdon interviews Emmanuel Jal

Jal, 29, was a boy soldier in the Sudan People's Liberation Army – the veteran of many confrontations in Sudan and Ethiopia.

His battle experiences and rise to become an international rap star, performing alongside the likes of Peter Gabriel and Coldplay, are detailed in his memoir War Child: A Boy Soldier's Story.

The London-based writer and rapper is still tormented by his childhood, as he explains from Kenya. He is performing in a series of fundraising concerts in Africa.

"I hear gunshots from an AK-47, I feel the bombs exploding, they wake me up. Certain sounds come into my head, they cloud my head," says Jal, who has been a guest of this month's Sydney Writers' Festival.

"I can hear people screaming. I hear the sounds over and over."