265: Volume 1: Sound Magic, by Afro Celt Sound System

Afro Celt Sound System (United Kingdom/Ireland/Senegal)
Volume 1: Sound Magic (1996)
9 tracks, 66 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

This is the second time we’ve encountered the Afro Celt Sound System on this blog, and this time we’re actually talking about a real album. In total, ACSS went on to release a total of five studio albums in their original incarnation and a further two (so far) in their current set-up with a different core membership. But of all those albums, it is still this one, their very first, that grabs me the most and grabs me hardest.

The excitement of the record is palpable in its music. World music fusions had been created before this point, but 1996 was still a time when it felt like everything was possible and full of potential – as opposed to now, where it does feel a little bit as if almost every conceivable crossover has already been attempted. When Sound Magic first arrived, nothing like this had been heard before. The combination of Irish and Scottish music with West African music was already exhilarating – firstly in even daring to bring two such apparently distant traditions together as one, and then, on listening, the amazement that the styles worked together so well – but to also set that meeting in the sonic surrounds of club, rave and dub music just adds a hundred possible more mouth-watering directions for completely new experimentation.

When I play this album today, all those possibilities and the surprises they conjure up still send me reeling. Senegalese kora dueting with Irish sean nós singing; tama and bodhrán drums trading rhythms while weaving between programmed beats; very-90s-sounding synths taking their rightful place alongside uilleann pipes and low whistles in the Irish heterophony; snatches of sounds from other traditions here and there in the Armenian duduk, Kenyan nyatiti and Siberian throat singing. Even now, after nearly 25 more years of musical innovations since, it still sounds a little hard to believe, but each combination manifests beautiful flowers.

There’s barely a wrong musical turn on the whole album, which is even more incredible when it’s taken into account that these musicians often couldn’t speak the same language. They were making up the rules on the fly and communicating through their instruments. It doesn’t become a confusing amalgam either, where everything is thrown together with a dance beat and a hope that people will be too busy moving to pay too much attention, as some fusions tend to sound like. No, there’s an obvious amount of deep and careful thought behind every piece of music, every texture change and every new instrument introduced. The club bangers work brilliantly – ‘Whirl-y-Reel 1’ is still an enduring favourite in my bounce-your-head-off moments – but the long, thoughtful and calm pieces such as the final medley ‘Eistigh Liomsa Sealad/Saor Reprise’ are just as delightful and perfectly complementary.

One of the reasons the Afro Celt Sound System were so exciting was precisely because the Afro Celt Sound System had never existed before, not only in our realm, but even in most of our wildest imaginations. That some imaginations could fathom such an ensemble, such an unexpected sound, is something that the rest of us must be thankful for. ACSS changed the face of world music and their impact on how musicians and audiences approach cross-cultural fusions cannot be overstated. And it all started, appropriately, with Volume 1…Sound Magic indeed.

213: Clychau Dibon, by Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita

Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita (United Kingdom/Senegal)
Clychau Dibon (2013)
7 tracks, 56 minutes
Bandcamp ∙ Spotify ∙ iTunes

The idea behind Clychau Dibon is such an obvious one that when it came out, you just had to think, ‘why has this never been done?!’ But it hadn’t been done, and Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita turned out to be the perfect musicians to take it on.

Simply put, this is an album of harp duets that span continents. Catrin Finch is a Welsh harpist with a background in classical music and an interest in Welsh folk, and Seckou Keita is a kora player from Senegal. The two instruments have very similar yet recognisable sounds, and their playing techniques set them apart, but they both have the same delicate, shimmering sound that must surely be one of the most relaxing in the world of acoustic music.

They didn’t go overboard with it, either. This magical meeting could so easily have exploded into a ‘harps of the world’ project with a million contributors from across the globe and any subtlety of sound or style would be lost. But instead they kept it exactly the right size – just the two of them – and in Clychau Dibon, it was executed immaculately.

When Catrin and Seckou play together, it makes complete sense. Even though they are from rather radically different musical traditions, the music they make together feels completely natural, like this repertoire was always meant to accommodate both instruments and both cultures. The pieces that are included were put together quite democratically. They’re all co-composed or at least co-improvised to some degree, but as for the core melodies of the pieces, some are contributed by Catrin, some by Seckou, and some come from traditional pieces from their respective cultures. And none stand out among the others – they’re all treated with the exact same level of respect and achieve the same level of success. The whole way through it is an utter delight of rippling, trickling strings that paint a breathtakingly serene and peaceful landscape. It’s enough to make you well up: the world is beautiful, and Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita help make it so.

186: Boomerang, by Daara J

Daara J (Senegal)
Boomerang (2003)
13 tracks, 56 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

I can't quite remember how I first came across Daara J. I have a vague memory of buying their album in an HMV, possibly on spec from having heard their name somewhere, but I also know I saw them on my 13th birthday at WOMAD as part of a strange 30-minutes-each double bill on the main stage with The Drummers of Burundi. I'm not sure which came first, but the end result was me listening to Boomerang and loving it.

I was thrilled to work out that this was hip-hop, and that I actually 'got' it. Hip-hop was always something other people liked that I never really understood, but this one hit me in the right places, even if I couldn't understand any of the Wolof and only a tiny fraction of the French. And – because that's how these things go – it opened my ears up to a whole world of hip-hop that I'm still loving and learning to this day.

It's not just hip-hop on offer on Boomerang, but those are the most successful bits of the album. The rest is more musically inclined towards pop and R'n'B that sounded dated enough when it came out, let alone now. Basically, you want to stick to the first five tracks of this one for the cream of the album, which goes noticeably downhill after that. But those five tracks are excellent. The highlight is the title track and opener. It's a rumination on the idea that hip-hop 'boomeranged' from Africa to America and now back. The raps in Wolof are at a blistering pace but every syllable is clear; the rhythms are exciting and the hooks from the then-young Malian singer Rokia Traore (who also appears on the track 'Le Cycle') are really beautiful.

Where Daara J are at their best – as they are on this album – is when they are uncompromising in their Senegalese identity. Their music may be born from hip-hop and doused in anything from soul to reggae to salsa, but there's also inescapable influences from mbalax, the sabar and tama drumming from the Wolof people and any number of other audibly Senegalese styles.

Of course, by the time I tried to impress the cooler kids at school with the fact I'd finally got into hip-hop (albeit in a slightly unusual way), they'd moved onto something else and hip-hop was deemed uncool now, and so remained I. But the joke's on them. I got to dig this great album that included African hip-hop at its best, and build a whole new taste in music from that point. They didn't. So nerr.

144: Sigil, by Nuru Kane

Nuru Kane (Senegal)
Sigil (2006)
13 tracks, 62 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

The first time I saw Nuru Kane live was at Africa Oyé festival in 2006, the same year as his debut CD, Sigil, came out. I must have already heard the album, because me and me dad were right down at the front. Next to us, there was a scouser who had sufficiently imbibed the festival spirit and probably other heady brews; he looked an unusual sort to be hanging around an African music festival in full trackies and a shaven head. Nuru came out and started singing the track ‘Djollof Djollof’. He was a proper imposing figure: tall, slender and muscular, dressed in a mixture of white shirt and blue jeans but with deep blue and red scarves, guimbri around his neck, singing this deep blues. And our slapheaded pal went nuts: “Jimi Hendrix, la! You’re Jimi Hendrix!” He had a point, you know. Apart from his right-handedness, he did look stunningly like some reincarnation of the axeman from straight out of the desert, with the bass lute as his weapon rather than the electric guitar. It was an absolutely blinding set, and we all had a great time – slaphead was swept off his feet throughout.

Nuru Kane comes from Dakar in Senegal, but with his band Bayefall Gnawa, he explores a connection that has surprisingly little precedent, even now. He brings the music of the Gnawa, the black population of Morocco, which is most recognisable for its use of the guimbri (a large bass lute like an ngoni) and qaraqabs (metal castanets), into his sound alongside the Wolof music of his own heritage and with a big healthy dose of blues too. The Gnawa were originally brought to Morocco as slaves from West Africa, and their music and cultural practices still strongly reflect these roots. Nuru’s songs on this album also forge the connections between his own religious sect, the Bayefall, and that of the Gnawa, as they are both uniquely West African forms of Sufi Islam.

When this album first came out, I got absolutely obsessed with it. Having got massively into blues music around the same time, I reckon this was my first real exposure to African music that consciously drew upon the blues as a way of highlighting their various stylistic similarities and it blew my mind. Two tracks on the album ‘Gorée’ and the aforementioned ‘Djollof, Djollof’ are literally blues tracks with all the other elements added onto that framework, so naturally those were the ones I gravitated to. In them, Nuru’s soulful voice bends in and around the styles so subtly it’s as if they were always meant to be together, but his skills as a straight-up blues musician are such that he could take that one full-time and flourish. And obviously it’s not just the blueses that work well here; the track ‘Niane’ is a perfect blend of all three of the styles, with blues guitar and Wolof-style vocals all over a rollicking bed of Gnawa trance music.

Back when it came out, I played this CD to absolute death. I thought it was perfect. Now my tastes and ears have grown a little more refined, I think that may be a bit of an overstatement, but it’s certainly a great record. He may not be Jimi Hendrix, but if Hendrix grew up in Senegal obsessed with Moroccan music, I imagine he would indeed sound a bit like this.

118: Fofoulah, by Fofoulah

Fofoulah (United Kingdom/Senegal/Gambia)
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.

032: Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal, by the Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa

The Monks of the Abbaye de Keur Moussa (Senegal)
Keur Moussa: Sacred Chant and African Rhythms from Senegal (1997)
17 tracks, 42 minutes
Spotify · iTunes

Musical fusions are absolutely everywhere now – if you can think of two types of music from anywhere in the world, the chances there’s been a meeting in some studio to record a collaboration of the two. Some are better than others, but most of them have the simple goal of putting two styles together and seeing if they sound good. The fusion heard on this albums is much more organic than most.

The Abbaye de Keur Moussa is a Benedictine abbey not too far out of the Senegalese capital Dakar. When you consider that Senegal is a country where more than 90% of the population is Muslim (and most of Senegal’s neighbours have a similar or higher percentage), an entire abbey of Catholic monks is certainly a point of interest. Add in the important roles that music of very different kinds play in Senegalese and Benedictine societies, well…

When I first heard of the existence of the Keur Moussa abbey, I knew I had to find out about its music. I wasn’t disappointed. This is some of the most fascinating music out there, I would say. The monks – some of them French, most of them Senegalese – make music that reflects their two cultures in a unique way.

There actually seems to be loads of recordings out there of the monks performing their duties – from sermons to music to prayer – but this album is the one that’s gotten the most exposure. It shows a good range of the music of the abbey: there are a cappella pieces of Benedictine chant and liturgy, and there are a few instrumental-only tracks which showcase the traditional West African instruments. The most intriguing tracks in this collection for me, though, are those where the two soundworlds meet, where kora and balafon are used to accompany the chant. There’s an interesting push-and-pull at work during these moments: sometimes the melody and rhythms of the chant take on a distinctly Senegalese feel; at others, the instruments work more in a European idiom. There’s even a lovely instrumental meeting between kora and oboe in the track ‘Dédicace (Dedication),’ which comes out as quite a jolly classical piece.

It’s all recorded there in the abbey, with all the associated godly reverb you would expect. With everything all together, the effect is palpable. There’s no escaping that this music is deeply religious and meditative, and with that comes a real sense of calm that permeates through it. It’s also just refreshing to hear an international music fusion that has come about in this way, to perform a real function in a literal hybrid culture, rather than a musical objet d’art manufactured for outside ears.

008: Specialist in All Styles, by Orchestra Baobab

Orchestra Baobab (Senegal)
Specialist in All Styles (2002)
9 tracks, 50 minutes
Bandcamp · Spotify · iTunes

Orchestra Baobab do well with their album titles. I reckon they have two of the best: the compilation Pirates Choice from 1989, which was followed by Specialist in All Styles in 2002. How cool and self-assured are those? I reckon Pirates Choice probably pips it in terms of title - and legendary status - but for me, it’s Specialist in All Styles that is the real stand-out musically.

The band are one of the premier exponents of explicitly Afro-Cuban son-derived music in West Africa. The Cubanity is all-pervading in Baobab’s music, but it couldn’t be from anywhere else but Senegal: the traditions of the géwél and jali (the Wolof and Mande griots) are strong, especially in the declamatory vocal style, and the transposing of the signature sound of son, the montuno riff, from the piano to the electric guitar makes theirs a style that straddles continents. It was the pop of 70s Senegal, before it was usurped by the behemoth that is mbalax. The band fell from favour and eventually split up; this album was their triumphant return after 14 years.

The quality of music and production is exquisite throughout Specialist in All Styles, but it’s a particular bit of album sequencing on the second half of the record that really does it for me. Three tracks: ‘On Verra Ça,’ ‘Hommage à Tonton Ferrer,’ ‘El Son Te Llama,’ one after the other. Amazing! The first is probably the best track on the album, the one I play again and again. The second is a slow, sultry piece with guest vocals from legends across an ocean, Ibrahim Ferrer and Youssou N’dour. The third is a Cuban classic, played at a lightning pace and rendered extra spicy with Senegalese flair. Bam bam bam. Excellent. This record could just be these three tracks and clock in at 16 minutes and I’d be happy.