Songs From Badissa

Cameroonian vocal¬ist and multi¬instrumentalist Erik Aliana and his band Korongo Jam are attracting their fair share of attention, and no wonder. The korongo-style music of this tight-knit outfit has the sort of joyous, freeform creativity that turns heads. Korongo music is based on kindo, which is in turn a form of the heavily energetic bikutsi music – a term which literally means to ‘thump the earth’, and which relies upon the clunk of the balafon (xylophone). Aliana, a schoolteacher's son who grew up studying in a Western school but spent holidays in his village in Badissa in Central Cameroon, deftly blends the traditional and modern. Electric guitars and kit drums vie and blend with flutes, balafon and mvet, the unwieldy but resonant African stick zither, creating a funky and often trancey sound with its own quirky identity.

Lyrics sung in O'sananga, French and English variously denounce corrupt African leaders and their complicit Western counterparts, drive home the need for national pride and underline the joy inherent in everyday African life. The lullaby-like opener ‘Bwa Bwa’ is Aliana's take on an O'sananga nursery staple; the lilting ‘Tingo Kiro’ is a salutary tale about the perils of riches. ‘Au Coin de Feu’ pays homage to griots, their mvets and their nyass (small castanets), with Aliana playing the role of a griot, paying respect to the elders who are now forced to live in destitution. An important new player in African music.