Muzikifan,
Album Review
>>
This is Samaké's second album and, like the first, is devoted to traditional Bamana hunters' songs from the Mande people of West Africa. The hunters of Mali predate colonialism, they predate Christianity and Islam. As animists they're in touch with the spirits which are part of their natural surroundings. The lead instrument is the traditional harp of the hunter, a kind of ngoni which is familiar from Ngoni Ba as well as Issa Bagayogo. It's been twenty years since Musique du Monde put out his first album Music of the Hunters of Sebenikoro, which I often aired on my African Music Program on the radio. Back then Sibiri was hailed as a young virtuoso, born into the hunter clan, who had adapted to being a griot as well as a hunter. Traditionally hunters are responsible for the police force and medicine (learned from the forest), as well as providing fresh meat to their communities. Sabaré's bluesy vocals and resonant bass instrument (which is bluesy in the extreme) is accompanied here by karinya, or iron scraper, and kusubu, or shaker. Imagine Jack Bruce & Ginger Baker (with or without the red hair and kilts) & you get a sense of the dynamic jamming interplay between the ngoni and the percussionists. And like "Live at the Fillmore" there are four tracks that were captured in one take each. (Funny that I thought of Wheels of Fire because it also has two really long tracks and two less-long tracks...) The title means "traditional music," but if they had styled it a rootsy jazz-blues jam from the modern city of Bamako it would have made as much sense. Another superb offering from the KSK label. (Due out October 24th.) 10/01/11
>> go there
|