Duniama

The Jarabi Band was formed a decade ago when Mohamed Camara, a Guinean-born, Australian-based kora player, songwriter and vocalist, and his wife Anna Camara, met guitarist David Tweedie at a folk festival. The trio were joined by bassist Georgia Frey and the quartet began exploring the interstices between African and Australian culture on a series of trips to Guinea. Since then they’ve expanded to become a sextet with the addition of drummer Maddison Carter and saxophonist Flora Carbo, two emerging young stars from the Melbourne jazz scene. The group’s debut album, recorded in just four days, is a thrilling fusion of West African tradition and smart Afro-jazz. Mohamed is very clearly the bandleader with his rippling kora, rich vocals in a variety of different African languages and explosively polyrhythmic balafon playing on ‘Fulani’ and the title-track (which translates as ‘in this world’ in Susu). Yet the ensemble are far more than his backing band, adding vibrant jazz textures to his melodies with Carbo’s sax making a particularly outstanding contribution on ‘Djamana’ and several other tracks. It’s mostly high-octane stuff, tailor made for shuffling around a dancefloor, but the gentler moods of ‘Sabui’ and the closer ‘Kolon Kuma’ lend a more reflective tone.