Fofoulah (2014)
9 tracks, 40 minutes
Bandcamp • Spotify • iTunes
As the brainchild of a jazz drummer with an intense interest in West African drumming, it’s no wonder that Fofoulah’s sound is so rhythmically intense. The group was formed by Dave Smith, who’s currently best known as the drummer for Robert Plant after the Led Zep man absorbed the brilliant Afro-blues trance group JuJu into his own Sensational Space Shifters. Smith became a major force in the UK jazz scene before becoming obsessed with the Senegambian sabar drums and their amazingly complex rhythms.
So that’s where Fofoulah’s music starts. The drums are all-important, and between Smith on drum kit and Gambian percussionist Kaw Secka on the tama talking drum – and both with the sabar – they create whole soundworlds just out of skin, stick and finger. The polyrhythms shift constantly throughout, a brilliant mix of traditional West African styles and jazz, and with other incursions from dub and hip-hop. That basis informs the rest too, which layers up Wolof songs with astro-jazz solos, synthscapes and highlife-informed guitars.
There’s also great contributions here from Tom Challenger, a great sax player who straddles jazz and classical worlds (and occasionally looks disconcertingly like an older version of me) and Batch Gueye, a Wolof griot who’s become an important part of the UK African music scene, as well as guest musicians Juldeh Camara, Iness Mezel and Ghostpoet.
Fofoulah was the group’s first album and they absolutely burst onto the scene with it – it sounds much more accomplished and assured than a debut would lead you to believe, and I do think a big part of that is Smith’s rhythmic wizardry. They’ve not long come out with a second album, Daega Rek, which I’ve not managed to listen to yet, but I’m interested to find out how four years of touring and maturing have changed their sound.
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