Reviews
La Confusion
The ninth studio album from the blind Malian duo opens with ‘Bofou Safou’, a disco-fied electro-pop excursion that you'd be...
Reviewed in issue November/2017
Abatwa (The Pygmy): Why Did We Stop Growing Tall?
Following recordings made in Vietnam, Cambodia and Mali, the fourth album in Ian Brennan's Hidden Musics series finds the indefatigable...
Reviewed in issue November/2017
Uhamiaji
When a press release states that an album will redefine the boundaries of whatever style it purports to represent, you...
Reviewed in issue November/2017
Afrobeats Hot Hits: The New Sound of Urban Africa
The sounds of Afrobeats are not to be mistaken with the music of Fela Anikulapo Kuti. The crucial ‘s’ denotes...
Reviewed in issue November/2017
Mezana Dounia
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
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
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
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
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
