Concha Buika Odemba OK Jazz Orchestra Baobab Bassekou Kouyate
Benjamin Escoriza Trilok Gurtu Parno Graszt Jarmila Xymena Gorna
Marcio Faraco Oumou Sangare
Buika, Niña De Fuego (Atlantic)
Forget her posing nude on the cover, it’s the naked emotions and a voice smokier than a French barbecue stall that are the star attractions of this magnificent third album from flamenco’s rising sensation. No little girl of the fire, María Concepción Balboa Buika is a woman who smoulders with percussive diction and erupts in soul baring declarations of love and desolation to, variously, latin jazz grooves, gospel-flavoured piano, splendidly abrupt flamenco guitar, handclaps and forlorn trumpet. Powerful, dramatic, intimate and at times almost cinematic music, and Buika lives every seductive syllable.
From The Herald June 21, 2008.
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Odemba OK Jazz, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh
The sound of Kinshasa hit Edinburgh with full party force on Thursday. As guitarist Dizzy Mandjeku said in noting the cabaret seating front of stage, nobody in the Congolese capital would dream of sitting down to the music that pays homage to his late boss and inspiration, Franco Luambo, rumba master, guitar innovator, songwriter and general African music business dynamo.
It was a gentle warning. Presently, Mandjeku’s trumpeter left no doubt that he was having none of this reclining while the twelve piece worked up a sweat with a whole catalogue of moves. Quite right, too, although the view from the second row of tables did allow close appreciation of brilliantly fluent, punchy bass playing – right-handed guitar, left-handed style, thumb, fingers and even pinkie picking and dampening the strings – and Mandjeku and his guitar playing colleague playing duck’s bum tight unison lines and taking solos that were like finger-tip controlled cascades.
The Ark principle’s at work here: aside from bass and drums - another hero whose whipcrack precision produces a relentless drive, there are two of everything, guitars, saxophones, trumpets, female vocals and male vocals, all performing with teamwork that coalesces in the big picture with intuitive understanding. Songs come in rapid-fire choruses, delivered in exuberant voices and peppered with trumpet commentaries that would make the Tower of Power horns look almost indolent and inattentive by comparison.
When the sitting down stopped, the “Simon says” action produced not so much dancing as temporary mass migration, including a stage invasion, although the band’s prolonged ensemble game of statues proved that even they could stay still to an energising, way beyond feelgood groove.
From The Herald, October 5, 2009.
Orchestra Baobab, HMV Picture House, Edinburgh
It’s music that, in the days before the internet opened doors to unlimited choice, usually happened in ports, where different sounds drifted in through the shipping channels. They were brought in by sailors, of course, although sometimes so naturally have certain styles coalesced that it seems as though it’s the currents themselves that washed the notes together.
Such is the case with Orchestra Baobab, who grouped together in the Senegalese capital of Dakar, Africa’s westernmost port, and since the 1970s have been having a ball mixing and matching songs and music from their native traditions with salsa in particular and Cuban influences and, indeed, the whole Caribbean musical caboodle in general.
The result, as reggae rhythms race along at a clip and tenor saxophonist and all-round character Issa Cissoko celebrates the St Thomas carnival Sonny Rollins-style, is akin to having a Swiss watch’s mechanism powered by a human heartbeat. Congas, timbales and maracas interlock with basslines of unarguable certainty. The two-man horn section toot, honk, riff and improvise tantalisingly and the guitars contribute discrete rhythmic patterns and liquid, thoughtfully constructed solos.
On top of this frankly feelgood melange the group’s multi-lingual, contrastingly textured vocals are almost an embarrassment of riches, with Rudy Gomis’s high, smooth soul preaching a particular delight and the blend of this with his colleagues’ more grainy tones calling to mind the late Cuban son master Ibrahim Ferrer. Even a prolonged monitor problem, although a distraction, couldn’t stem the music’s momentum or spoil the party onstage as Cissoko, altoist Thierno Koite and rhythm guitarist Latfi Benjeloun matched the percussionists’ interlocking strokes with relaxed but precise choreography.
From The Herald, April 7, 2009.
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, I Speak Fula (Out Here)
With a supernaturally invigorating live act and a band that appears to breathe as one, ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate could be Africa’s next major export. This second album captures all the qualities of his shows while adding a few guests. Kouyate’s brother Andra’s voice rumbles splendidly on the addictively scratchy Bambugu Blues and Vieux Farka Toure adds fluent guitar on two songs. But it’s Kouyate and his band, including his wife, the fabulous Amy Sacko’s vocals, his own liquid solo expression and their jangling ensemble patterns, that shine like stars in waiting.
From The Herald, September 19, 2009.
Benjamin Escoriza, Alevanta! (Riverboat)
Benjamin Escoriza emerged in the 1990s with the fabulous Spanish adventurers Radio Tarifa - forever known hereabouts as Radio Terrific - as one of the most distinctive singers in world music. Parched, gravelly and conveying an A to Z of fiery emotions, his voice rasps out here in songs that give flamenco a contemporary edge as well as following Radio Tarifa's footprints into Moroccan music and on to Sephardic and Cuban influences. Whether declaiming to urgent acoustic guitars and handclaps, riding an electric groove that transports Marvin Gaye's Inner City Blues to modern-day Marrakech, or luxuriating in an array of ouds, accordions and exotic reeds, Escoriza is always utterly compelling.
From The Herald, May 5, 2007
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Trilok Gurtu & the Arke String Quartet, Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
Last time Trilok Gurtu played the Old Fruitmarket, the rake sloped down towards the stage and there was a power cut. I'm still not convinced about the reversal of the layout of the venue, although I understand the reasoning behind it, but this was the Indian percussionist at full wattage.
Of all the collaborations he's featured in - and there have been many - Gurtu's meeting with the Arke String Quartet has to rank among the best. The Italians, who substitute double-bass for cello, use pick-ups to enhance their instruments' natural sounds and are not above adopting ukulele-style strumming if the music so demands, create a fabulous sound. They can be an all harmonics and flutey-toned backdrop or upfront soloists - violinist Carlo Cantini's bite and intensity is almost supernatural - or they can gang up with Gurtu in fiercely tight riffing reminiscent of the percussionist's sometime partner in crime, guitarist John McLaughlin.
Another Gurtu co-conspirator, Joe Zawinul, sprang to mind with Cantini's street-sounds-flavoured composition, Fez. And if the rowdy behaviour of a previous audience inspired another piece by Gurtu himself, such disrespect wasn't going to happen here as Gurtu seduced the auditorium with awesome percussion magic and pure theatre, culminating in the audience singing along with his intricate tabla rhythm vocables.
Earlier, another cross-cultural collaboration, India Alba, had set the scene admirably, merging adapted pipe marches with Indian violin and tabla ragas, cittern-led Scots-Indian melodies and the late Gordon Duncan's famous bagpipes setting of AC/DC's heavy-rock anthem, Thunderstruck. Along with Gurtu's gang, this quartet brought Celtic Connections 2008's Old Fruitmarket programme to a satisfying close while keeping the audience primed for future adventures.
From The Herald, February 5, 2008.
Parno Graszt, Spiegel Garden, Edinburgh
Catching Parno Graszt when they have something to celebrate must be quite an experience because this Hungarian gypsy troupe certainly know how to turn a gig into a party. There's a natural exuberance and bounce to their music as, largely predicated on the tambura's bright, chiming sound, songs are taken up and given as many choruses as the mood dictates.
Often the mood will be set by band members whose roles are multiple. The spoons player, for example, is an amazing dancer whose skipping, foot-slapping moves join the dots between the South African gumboot dance and Appalachian ham-boning. Later he'll produce a pole and perform a don't-try-this-at-home routine - part juggling, part martial art. Less concerned with skill is the mother figure, a woman who's clearly used to getting things done when she wants them doing and who imperiously fills the dancefloor.
While all this movement is happening, the band plays and sings on, introducing flamenco-like flavours on guitar and accordion and revealing a variety of vocal tones that, if they were singing in French or English, might pass for Cajun or blues. Whatever language he uses - and it seems to contain a vocalese of his own devising - the percussionist who beats his palm on two water jugs while maintaining a constant flow of improvised mouth music in tandem with the bassist's slapped lines is the source of much of the group's energy. Not your standard rhythm section, perhaps, but then not much is standard in the Parno Graszt manifesto.
From The Herald, September 1, 2008.
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Jarmila Xymena Gorna, Hashgacha (33 Records)
The flip strapline to Jarmila Xymena Gorna's wordless singing might be Kate Bush meets Flora Purim jamming with Bobby McFerrin, but dropping these names only begins describe her music. Gorna comes from a Polish Jewish family and it's as if she gathered her own history and oppressed peoples' traditions globally - Native Americans, rainforest-dwelling tribes and Balkans for starters - into her sophisticated, soul-bearing vision. Add a touch of Chick Corea's Spanish dances, rangy oud licks and flugelhorn-french horn chorales to Gorna's keyboards and audacious one-woman 'Beach Girls' harmonising and the picture gets bigger. If the stunningly cathartic My Hope and A Seal Upon My Heart's dizzying choir didn't sway this year's Radio 3 World Music Awards judges, we can only marvel at the quality of artists who did.
From The Herald, April 16, 2005
Márcio Faraco, Interior (Universal)
Dubbing Márcio Faraco “the Antonio Carlos Jobim of his generation” may be an over burdensome compliment. But with this second collection of songs, saudades, sambas and bossas comes the distinct feeling that, somewhere, Frank Sinatra and Stan Getz must be cursing the grim reaper for turning up before they could get their chops round them. As with its outstanding predecessor, Ciranda, Faraco writes and performs with a similar spare grace to Jobim, his careworn, papery voice and gentle acoustic guitar luxuriating in sad, soulful melodies to fastidious accompaniments that vary the mood from deliciously languid to mildly celebratory. A gorgeously understated work from an artist who deserves to escape from the well-kept secret category.
From The Herald, October 26, 2002.
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Oumou Sangare, Seya (World Circuit)
For those who found Oumou Sangare’s recent Celtic Connections appearance disappointingly brief, her new album will come as a timely, more generous confirmation of this Malian’s power to entrance. Sangare long ago realised the value in couching serious cultural points in engaging melodies and rhythms and has mastered the art of integrating western musical ideas while making music true to her roots. Thus Hammond organ, strings and even the JB Horns sit easily with hypnotic ngoni patterns and messages denouncing polygamy and under-age marriage soothe, reassure and issue the ultimate, irresistible party invitation.
From The Herald, February 21, 2009.
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