Reviews

Mezana Dounia

Massa Dembele

Massa Dembele is a jeli (griot) from Burkina Faso who plays the kamalengoni. It's a bridged harp-lute not dissimilar to...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Live in America

Oumar Konaté

Over the last few years, Oumar Konaté has been making his mark on the Mali guitar scene, his guitar-bass-drums trio...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Sweet as Broken Dates is a collection of Somali-language pop recorded in Somalia, Somaliland and Djibouti from the 1960s right...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Mali Blues: The Film Soundtrack

VARIOUS ARTISTS

This is the soundtrack to a documentary by the German filmmaker Lutz Gregor, which chronicles the return to Mali of...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Daba

Makan Badjé Tounkara

The simple, unaffected, sound of the traditional ngoni (lute) is one of West Africa's most distinctive and evocative musical delights....

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Boka Kafé

Tcheka

Manuel Lopes Andrade, better known simply as Tcheka, is a guitarist and singer from Cape Verde, the former Portuguese colony...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Gass Giss

Takeifa

Takeifa like to keep it in the family: the five members are all siblings. The four brothers and a sister...

Reviewed in issue October/2017

Creology

Carmen Souza

When you hear Carmen Souza, it's like being thrown into some sort of fantasy land where Billie Holiday was in...

Reviewed in issue August/2017

monmon

Danyèl Waro

Ever since 1994, when he burst onto the world music scene with one of his landmark songs ‘Adékalom’, Danyèl Waro...

Reviewed in issue August/2017

We Used to be Africans

Cacique ’97

The opening track on this album by Cacique ’97, ‘Mahala’, simmers for half a minute before a barrage of horns...

Reviewed in issue August/2017