Sonbonbela

According to a somewhat over-excited press release, the third album by Burkina Faso's Baba Commandant & the Mandingo Band is ‘a non-stop hit parade of Afrobeat bangers destined to light dance floors and living rooms ablaze!’ Fortunately Sonbonbela is a lot better and more nuanced than that jumble of clichés and hysteria implies.

Recorded in Ouagadougou at the beginning of 2022, just as a military coup was toppling an elected government in the wake of a jihadist insurgency which had claimed 2,000 lives and forced 1.4 million people to leave their homes, the seven tracks are certainly full of a propulsive polyrhythmic energy. Led by commandant Mamadou Sanou's gritty vocals and furious ngoni playing, the trance-like rhythms, which mix traditional Mandingo forms with a touch of Fela, are on first hearing repetitive, but in fact the ostinati are organic and dynamic, constantly shifting and evolving before returning to the root. If Sanou is the captain, he delegates much to his first lieutenant, Issouf Diabate, whose fluid but funky psych lead-guitar lines recall the work of the sainted Djelimady Tounkara with Mali's Rail Band. With not a synth or an AutoTune anywhere to be heard, this is old-fashioned West African dance music at its high-octane best.