Né So

It's easy to read too much into the circumstances surrounding the making of a record, but it's clear that some life-changing experiences shaped Rokia Traoré's sixth album. She moved back to Mali in 2009 after living in Europe for several years. Then civil war broke out, an experience that left her feeling not only traumatised but, in her words, ‘naive’. These experiences seem to have imbued her new songs with a sombre maturity, a quality emphasised further by a deathless cover of ‘Strange Fruit’, Billie Holiday's nightmarish vision of lynching. Produced by John Parish and backed by a band drawn from across West Africa and beyond, there's a taut, indie-rock vibe, which can partly be attributed to the presence of former Led Zeppelin man John Paul Jones on bass and Devendra Banhart, who sings and plays guitar on ‘Sé Dan’, which also features English lyrics by Toni Morrison. Yet if this is a rock album, it's still one with a distinctly African sensibility on songs such as the gentle ‘Kolokani’, a tribute to Bamana ancestors, ‘O Niele’, a stirring paean to the courage of a new generation of African women, and the throbbing, ngoni-fuelled power of ‘Obiké’.