Kigali Y’Izahabu

The most exciting thing about Kigali Y'Izahabu is that it is potentially going to reach an audience who might not otherwise have heard any African records this year. Recorded in Rwanda in July 2009 by the American rock producer Ian Brennan and released on the ultra-hip indie label Dead Oceans, such connections mean that The Good Ones are going to reach ears previously familiar with African music only via such crossover exercises as Damon Albarn's Africa Express. The problem is that this indie-based audience may feel let down, particularly if they believe the record label's daft hype that the group are ‘punk-embodied, barefoot, bandaged and jaundiced.’

In fact, what they will hear is three middle-aged Rwandan traditional singers cum guitarists who turned up to the recording with one acoustic guitar between them – and even that had two strings missing. The songs are unpolished and clearly unrehearsed. There's no trace of anything you'd call an arrangement and although Bob Marley and Santana are cited as influences, you'd never guess it: the rudimentary finger-picking sounds like somebody trying to learn Elizabeth Cotton's ‘Freight Train’, and doing so rather badly. There's plenty of charm and intimacy to their simple, trad-African folk stylings and the voices of Jeanvier Havugimana and Adrien Kazigira weave some captivatingly rough-shod harmonies. As a field recording of unmediated Kigali street singing, it has considerable attractions. But it also has an undeniable feeling of an opportunity missed.