Au Cabaret Sauvage (2002)
12 tracks, 45 minutes
I can’t find anywhere to listen or download this album in the UK. It’s on Spotify if you’re from elsewhere (might work in France?) and there are some tracks on YouTube and Vimeo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), but that’s it. Weird. Hit me up and I can sort you out with a download.
[Introductory note: some versions of this album were called L’une des Siens but I’ve no idea why they decided to change it – the insides remained the same. The cover is also basically the same too, so if you see that one about…it’s this one.]
I can’t remember whether it was myself or my dad (our record collections are basically one and the same by now), but one of us got this album at a second-hand CD shop in Lyme Regis. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of that shop – I’ve even been scouring Google Street View to no avail, so I guess it must have gone the way of so many of the best record shops and closed since I was last there. A shame, because over the few times we visited Lyme Regis, we picked up a bunch of great albums there, including several that will feature on this list.
Lo’Jo are long-time veterans of what is easiest (and laziest, vaguest) to call ‘world fusion,’ but where a lot of musicians in the scene went the electronica-with-samples route, Lo’Jo did it all live. With a core of smokily charismatic singer and keys player Denis Péan and Algerian singer-multi-instrumentalist sisters Nadia and Yamina Nid El Mourid, the group introduce as many guests as musical styles, creating their own sound which mixes variously French folk music, classical, Latin, North African, manouche jazz, spoken word, flamenco and even dub and circus music, and anything else that catches their ear. This is chamber music for the internationally-eared.
On Au Cabaret Sauvage, Lo’Jo draw particular influence from Tuareg music, both traditional styles and the essouf guitar music made famous by Tinariwen, foreshadowing the French band’s many appearances at the Festival au Désert in the coming years. Tuareg sounds are all over the album, and it even features cameos from various members of Tinariwen, including Mohamed Ag Illale, better known as Japonais, who gets a track all to himself (odds are you won’t have seen him live even if you’re a big fan of the Tuareg group – he never took part in the touring band, preferring to stay close to the desert).
There are a bunch of great tracks on this album, but the one that stood out in particular on relistening to write this entry was ‘Petit Homme.’ It brings so many of the band’s influences together in a really effective way. The interplay between the guitar riff, Tuareg imzad (one-stringed fiddle) and bendir (frame drum with gut strings) gives a wonderful Saharan-hued bed for Péan’s gruff poetry and Pablo-ish melodica.
Over the years there have been so many projects that aim to mash-up music from everywhere into one whole, but few that do it with the subtlety, class and charm of Lo’Jo, and Au Cabaret Sauvage (or L’une des Siens) shows their work at its strongest.
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