Mburu

Raffit is a French composer and jazz and blues guitarist who 15 years ago founded the Chambre d’Hôte Orchestra. One of life’s serial collaborators, on Mburu he teams up with the mighty-voiced Senegalese singer Pape Amath N’Diaye, who was born in Dakar before his parents moved to the south of France while he was still young. There he grew up and formed the duo Buru with Francine Tièche in 1990. Known professionally as Paamath he has since released a trio of solo albums and worked with a host of jazz and African musicians from Joe Zawinul to Staff Benda Bilili. He sings here in a deep, resonant voice over Raffit’s jazzy riffs and blues lines, blurring the musical trade routes between Africa, the American south and Europe. His scatting style on ‘Ndoumbo Ndiaye’ has to be heard to be believed while he wails like a soulful muezzin calling the faithful to prayer on the mysterious ‘Le Chant de la Terre’, one of a few tracks on Mburu to which Isabelle Bagur adds haunting flute. ‘Moudialé’ is a 12-bar blues with a Sahelian twist, that conjures an image of Jeff Beck jamming with Ali Farka Touré. As for Raffit, he sounds rather like one might imagine John McLaughlin would have done if he had chosen to fuse his jazz chops with African rather than Indian music.