Kassa

We first heard Mali’s Adama Yalomba on the 2003 Festival au Desert compilation. Then the trail went cold again. Kassa is apparently his third album but the first to get an international release – and it has had to wait three years for that, for these dozen tracks were recorded at Bamako’s Bogolan studios in 2007. Singing in an attractive baritone in Bambara, Boso, Lingala, French and English, he makes a pleasant but lightweight Afro–pop sound with a distinctly retro 1980s feel. There are plenty of high–calibre collaborators on board, including Toumani Diabaté, keyboardist Cheikh Tidiane Seck, Rokia Traoré and Bassekou Kouyaté, although in most instances you’re hard pressed to identify their individual contributions as they slot readily into the accomplished ensemble playing. The blatant pop feel of ‘Baara’ and the title–track are balanced by more introspective material such as the lovely ‘Kadidja’ and the traditional–sounding African strings of ‘Odel’.

But what’s lacking is any real sense of Yalomba’s own personality. I’m reminded of an old Incredible String Band lyric: ‘You know all the words, and you sung all the notes/But you never quite learned the song’. It’s all perfectly played and everything is in its right place. And yet something is still very obviously missing.