New York Times,
Album Review
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Sia Tolno starts her second album, “My Life,” (Lusafrica), released in December, by belting the words “Blamah Blamah” — not an explosion, though it sounds like one, but a remembrance of a festival at a town in her native Sierra Leone that was later leveled by a civil war. Now living in Guinea, Ms. Tolno is a forthright singer along the lines of Angelique Kidjo and Miriam Makeba, ready for leathery exhortations or melting ballad lines. She doesn’t mince words whether she’s singing in African languages or English: “People they fight here and there for power/killing young and strong men of our land,” she sings in “Odju Watcha.” Yet her songs ride sleek, complex studio grooves that draw from all over Africa and beyond — Nigeria, Congo, Senegal, the Caribbean — to find pleasure in hard-headed resilience. 12/30/11
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