World Music Matters

Admas, a quartet of young Ethiopian musicians living in exile in Washington DC, had a ball recording an album of synth-heavy, funked up versions of Ethiopian classics. 'Sons of Ethiopia ' was soon forgotten but became cult among fans of ethiojazz. Now reissued by Frederiksberg Records, it reflects happier times from a generation that "just escaped" the worst of the Derg.

Some records are far more than the sum of their parts, and Sons of Ethiopia is one such.

The seven tracks were recorded in 1984 by the band Admas: Henock Temesgen, Abegasu Shiota, Tewodros “Teddy” Aklilu and Yousef Tesfaye.

Like so many Ethiopian expats in the U.S. at the time, the four young men had fled the Derg: the military junta that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. As the White Terror gave way to the Red Terror, over a million people died in the violence.

Aklilu, the band’s keyboard player, left Addis in 1977, aged 15, just before the worst of the Red Terror began.

“It was so sad, kids killed each other,” he told RFI on the line from Addis. “I went to the U.S. and basically closed my ears for the next two or three years.”

Aklilu closed his ears to the horror, but opened them to exciting new music.

When bass player Henock Temesgen, an old school friend, arrived in Washington DC in 1980 they began playing together.

“It was a very dark time but we found our cocoon, our own friends, playing in each other’s houses. We tried to create our own group, our own happy times,” said Temesgen.

The need to experiment

The two friends played in a band called Gasha and took up residency at the Red Sea, a lively Ethiopian restaurant in Washington.

They would open for big Ethiopian names like Aster Aweke, playing instrumentals to audiences of expats, many of whom had lost friends and family in the civil war.

While they enjoyed traditional Ethiopian music, they immersed themselves in the sounds of their new home with its go go funk, jazz, highlife, samba and roots reggae.

Brazilian jazz fusion band Azymuth, The Crusaders and Spyro Gyra were big influences, they said.

“In DC you got to hear a lot more of what the world has to offer, than in Ethiopia, and it’s very natural that when you hear something you want to experiment with it,” Aklilu explained.

What’s more, there were new tools like Moog keyboards, synthesisers and electric guitars to play with.

Joined by drummer Yousef Tesfaye and multi-instrumentalist Abegasu Shiota, the musicians expressed their more experimental side under the new name of Admas.

“Abagasu liked to work with computers, he had a four track very basic recorder and started playing with it, said it would be nice to record something,” Temesgen said.

They scraped the funds together to record seven tracks and had 1,000 copies pressed.

They sold a few, paid off their debts, but didn’t make any money.

“We didn’t have any business sense,” Aklilu laughed. “We still don’t!”

Re-shaping songs from happier times

They recorded instrumental, high-tech versions of songs largely from “the golden era, the good old days, Ethiopian music from happier times” Temesgen explained.

“The experimentation was not in the melody but in the harmonisation and rhythm,” said Aklilu.

They did “a reggae-ish version” of Wed Enate, put samba rhythms into Samba Shegitu and paid tribute to Ghanaian highlife on Bahta’s Highlife although, as Aklilu admitted, it owes more to Congolese soukous.

On Tez Alegn Yetintu, the band drew out its melancholic blues feeling.

“It’s a popular song and we played it in half time, so for a lot of people the melody would be very slow. But we played it like a really melancholic blues song.”

The age group that just escaped

Spurred on by the optimism of their youth, Admas bent some of these melancholic old melodies into new shapes.

“I think the music you can hear on the album is our experience of America basically, it was more hopeful than sad,” said Aklilu.

“And also our personalities come through the music,” Temesgen continued. “During that time our personalities were optimistic and hopeful.”

“We were not damaged by the revolution, we escaped, we were lucky. And I think the album might reflect that age group that just escaped.”

Still fresh today

The men moved on, went their separate ways and forgot about the album.

Then decades later, Aklilu was contacted by Andreas Vingaard, founder of NY-based Frederiksberg Records. A big fan of Francis Falceto’s Ethiopiquescompilations, Vingaard had stumbled on Sons of Ethiopia and wanted to reissue the record.

“When I heard Admas for the first time, it sounded very different from any other Ethiopian music I had heard,” he told RFI.

“It's clearly Ethiopian, but it's different and familiar at the same time. It's incredible to me that so many years later it still has a real freshness to it.”

The men were surprised the album had generated new interest.

“We didn’t know but a lot of people have been collecting it and liked it; it was being sold for a lot of money on eBay. Somebody said the album had a cult following,” Aklilu recalled.

“It is great music,” Temesgen admitted, but “I didn’t think people outside the Ethiopian community would know about the way I felt.”

“It will be a surprise for this generation I think,” said Aklilu.

The beat goes on in Addis  

Three of the band members have made successful careers in music.

Aklilu now works on music research projects and sometimes tours with Ethiopian pop star Teddy Afro, Temesgen has become a prominent music educator and Shiota is one of the country’s top recording engineers. They’ve played together and don’t rule out releasing another Admas album one day.

The music scene in Ethiopia is “very vibrant” the Admas duo said, with lots of young bands playing in a range of genres: ethio-jazz, pop music and traditional.

But this promising scene is hamstrung by heavy import taxes of up to 300 percent on musical instruments, which are deemed luxury items.

“It’s killing the music here, it’s really damaging us,” regretted Aklilu. “Musicians can’t afford instruments; it’s one thing the government needs to change so music can grow in this country.”

Sons of Ethiopia, on vinyl and cd, complete with detailed liner notes, is available here. 

Italian composer Ennio Morricone was famed for his film scores but his work straddled jazz, pop, psychedelia as well as the avant-garde, influencing bands as diverse as Air and Metallica.

Ennio Morricone left behind some 500 scores for both film and television.

The theme tune to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is undoubtedly one of the most renowned.

“Just 10 seconds into one of Morricone’s soundtracks, you know it’s him, you know which film it’s from, you can see the pictures,” said French composer Jean-Michel Jarre in the wake of the Italian composer’s death on 6 July.

To recreate this feeling of the American far west, Morricone added on drums, some flute, and of course the "cry" of a coyote.

The trademark whistling came courtesy of Spanish guitarist and whistler Curro Savoye, who now lives in the south of France.

The two men never met, but Savoye was "the" whistler on the vast majority of Morricone’s work.

The film soundtrack also includes “Ecstasy of Gold” – a stirring three-minute orchestral bonanza with drums to set you galloping into the sunset and wordless vocals by Edda Dell’orso with whom Morricone regularly collaborated.

The music is so stirring it became a fetish piece for U.S. band Metallica. Since 1983 they’ve played it to open all their concerts.

They recorded their own version of “The Ecstasy of Gold” for their tribute album to Morricone in 2007, and performed the song themselves for the first time at a 2009 concert in Copenhagen.

Metallica frontman James Hetfield said something special happened when they begun using the piece as their intro music in 1983.  “It set us up for the night and the fans got excited.”

In a tribute to Morricone on Instagram, he said the music had become “part of our blood flow, deep breathing, fist bumping, prayers and band huddle pre-show ritual ever since”.

'Elevated every film he scored'

Morricone wrote scores for six of Sergio Leone’s westerns. Their last collaboration was in 1984 for Once upon a time in America.

It was customary at the time to write the soundtrack before shooting the film, but still, Morricone’s music was so evocative that the director played it on set to conjure up the right atmosphere.

Sergio Leone’s westerns helped make Morricone a household name but the composer’s artistic reach knew no bounds.

Here in France, his biggest hit is the violin-heavy “Chi Mai” which famously featured in the 1981 film “The Professional” starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Morricone was nominated for a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar.

“His work elevated every film he scored,” wrote composer John Zorn in the NY Times, adding that Morricone could “make an unforgettable melody with a fistful of notes."

He did that not just in films but during his foray into pop in the 60s.

Arguably his most celebrated song, at least in his home country, was Se Telefonando sung by Mina. Were in not in Italian it could have rivalled with Burt Bacharach.

The refrain was inspired by the three notes of a French police siren and builds into a stand-up finale thanks to eight key changes!

Among the many French musicians who say they owe a lot to Morricone is electronic music duo Air.

Nicolas Godin said Morricone was among the composers who had most influenced him for "the way he used timbres and sounds that were close to avant-garde music".

Morricone’s influence can be heard on Prologo per la puttana di closingtown from the album City Reading(Tre Story Western), recorded with Italian writer Alessandro Baricco in 2003.

“I realized my Roman fantasy around music from westerns,” Godin told Les Inrockuptibles. “Ennio Morricone will remain the absolute master of Continental music.”

It’s often said that Morricone was sore and saddened at not being fully recognised as a classical composer. But he was.

His score for the 1986 film The Mission, in which he incorporated religious chant and tribal rhythms, remains one of his most haunting pieces, not least for the melancholy of its main them Gabriel’s Oboe.

A fistful of notes that lifted, and continue to lift, anyone who cares to listen.

Ennio Morricone's official website.

"Everyday I walk in this city, I know I walk alongside death," singer Hachalu Hundessa said just days before he was shot dead in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 28 June. We hear how the 34-year old protest singer became the voice of the Oromo ethnic group. "He was the soundtrack of the 2018 revolution that brought change to Ethiopia" Awol Allo told RFI.  

The murder of Hachalu Hundessa last Monday sent thousands of Oromo out onto the streets in protest. More than one hundred have died in the unrest.

There have been protests and mourning not just in the capital Addis and elsewhere in Ethiopia, but also in Minnesota, US, where a large Oromo diaspora settled after fleeing political repression and discrimination back home.

Like many Oromo artists, Hachalu could have fled, but chose to stay. Prophetically, just a week before his death, he told journalists he was well aware of the risks he was taking.

"He said: ‘What I am afraid of is a meaningless death, a death that has no purpose. I’m not afraid because I have a clarity of purpose in terms of what I want to achieve’," UK-based academic and Oromo rights activist Awol Allo told RFI.

Hachalu’s main focus as a singer was highlighting and defending the Oromo cause and it earned him many enemies.

"One of the things that makes it so complex, so painful, is the fact that Oromo is a majority group (in Ethiopia) but subordinated economically, marginalised culturally and repressed politically," Allo continued.

Hachalu used "his incredible imaginative power, verbal invention and poetic expression to very ably articulate some of those issues".

"It’s almost impossible to think of anyone else who has used the power of art, the power of music (like he did) to push a transformative political agenda forward."

Romantic and deeply political songs

Hachalu began writing songs aged 17 when he was imprisoned for five years for his political activities.

He released his first album Sanyii Mootii (Race of the King) in 2009, a year after leaving prison. The title track is about falling in love with an Oromo woman who is proud of her identity and prepared to die for it.

His second album Waa’ee Keenya(Our Plight) came out in 2013 while he was touring the US and became a top African seller on Amazon.

Soundtrack of a revolution

Hachalu played a key role in the Oromo protests from 2015 to 2018 which led to the fall of the Ethiopian government.

"He was one of the most important voices in the Oromo protests and ultimately forced the resignation of the then prime minister [Hailemariam Desalegn] and the appointment of the current prime minister Abiy Ahmed," Allo said. "From that point of view he was basically the soundtrack of that revolution that brought change."

"It’s essentially a song about dispossession and the government’s policy of land grab around the city of Addis Ababa," said Allo, "displacing hundreds of thousands of farmers.

"What the video to the song shows is the gradual displacement and eviction, one by one, of young people who live there with their families then ultimately becoming day labourers on their own land."

By 2017 the political situation was evolving and his following hit, Jira (We are here), reflected that growing sense of hope.

While the song was written just before Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, became prime minister in 2018 "the message was that ‘we have come so far, things have changed so much on the ground and this is a moment of hope’".

Art and music - a repository for Oromo history

Protest song has always been a part of Oromo culture.

"As a community that has been historically marginalised and subordinated and denied the opportunity to receive modern education, Oromo art has always served as a repository of Oromo experiences and history", Allo explained.

"So if you really want to learn about the history of the Oromo you go into these songs, songs of resistance," Allo continued. "It’s in the reservoir of these songs that you find the true and authentic experience of the Oromo people. It’s not in the official archives, in the history and geography books of the Ethopian state."

Oromo artists make ready use of a style known as geerarsa, a kind of flow, not unlike rap, which is used to whip up an audience.

"Geerarsa is a kind of free style narration of certain experiences, mainly used to mobilise people, to galvanise support for a particular cause. It’s a deeply-entrenched part of our culture," Allo explained.

The now legendary ‘Millenium’ benefit concert Hachalu gave in Addis December 2017 for the rehabilitation of some 700,000 internally displaced Oromo shows his ability to set audiences alight.

He paces the stage chanting: ‘You can no longer pin us down, we are too big, too hopeful, too resilient, too fired up’.

Crying for Oromo unity

Hachalu also had an extraordinary capacity to unite the huge and politically heterogenous Oromo community.

"We’re a very large community of 50 plus million people so you obviously have a lot of views about how people should organise and mobilise, there are differences," Allo said.

"But the thing for which Hachalu is credited the most is that he’s preaching unity, crying of Oromo unity. It’s almost impossible right now to think of somebody who could fill his shoes."

Inspiring speeches are great, but a song can travel and connect people like nothing else. After the tragic death of George Floyd, musicians are helping to bring issues of police violence and social justice to the fore. Beyoncé, queen of R 'n' B,  and the young gospel singer Keedron Bryant have just released songs with a strong 'Black Lives Matter' message.

After exploring Zoroastrian chants on her 2016 album “Gathas, songs my father taught me”, mezzo soprano Ariana Vafadari puts femininity to the fore with the heart-wrenching “Anahita”, inspired by the Persian prophet Zarathustra and the goddess of water. Ten deeply spiritual songs set to Oriental maqam scales, tracing a path from despair to resolution.

French-Iranian Vafadari has a successful career as an international opera singer, but remains deeply attached to her Zoroastrian roots. 

“I’m from two cultures,” she said. “I love opera more than anything but a part of me needed to express the origins, the music of Iran, the Oriental music.”

She learned Gathas - Zoroastrian prayers dating back some 3,700 years - from her father. 

“Gatha means song but we have no idea how it was sung at that time,” she said. “Just the prayers were kept and now the priest chants them. I wanted to compose music on it and make it more alive.”

She did just that for her 2016 album "Gathas, songs my father taught me". 

“It was something I gave to my father, I think it was my father’s side, my more masculine side: knowing, understanding, finding the way."

The album "Anahita" was inspired by the legend of the Persian goddessof water, fertility and wisdom. The story was introduced to Vafadari by Leili Anvar, a specialist in Persian literature who wrote the lyrics for seven of the songs.

Anvar's adaptation involves a modern day Iranian young woman whose village is plagued by drought, forcing its inhabitants to flee. She is visited by the goddess in a dream and goes on a quest to find the source of water.

Vafadari said the legend spoke to her in a world dominated by the over-exploitation of the world's resources. "It's a world of grabbing land, producing more; the masculinity is so powerful that I felt a lack of femininity in my own world and in myself."

In addition to original compositions, Vafadari sings three prayers from Zoroastrianism’s holy book known as the Avesta.

“The three prayers are the way Anahita finds her own femininity, the link to her ancestors and to earth and to water.”

Vafadari has surrounded herself with superb musicians from France, Turkey, Morocco and Iran: Julien Carton (piano), Driss El Maloumi (oud), Leila Soldevila and Nicolas Deutsch (double bass), Habib Meftah Boushehri (calabash, bendir, daf). 

“It’s important to show that our generation is a mixture of cultures, all these musics have to stay alive and stay together."

Follow Ariana Vafadari 

Purchase the album 

There are big names in The Eddy, a Netflix series about a struggling jazz club in Paris. But the real star is jazz. And since coronavirus is depriving us of the thrill of live music, the jazz sessions recorded with its own six-piece band provide music lovers a much needed fix. Composer Glen Ballard and saxophonist Jowee Omicil talk about the joy of putting music first.

All the songs in The Eddy were written by award-winning American composers Glen Ballard and Randy Kerber. 

The series began with a song and an idea back in 2007.

“Ive lived in Paris off and on all my adult life," Ballard told RFI.  "And I’ve always loved the fact that Paris still had jazz clubs, still had young people going to the clubs, listening to music being played live.

"So I had this concept of a club that I called The Eddy: a perfect jazz club where you could go and have the greatest band in the world and a great singer, and you could find some kind of connection with that music and work out some of your own problems.”

That “greatest band” is the Eddy Cast Band - formed especially for the series with Ludovic Louis (trumpet), Damian Nueva (double bass), Jowee Omicil (saxophone) Randy Kerber (piano) Lada Obradovic (drums) and Joanna Kulig on vocals.

“It’s a truly international band showing that jazz is an international language now,” said Ballard.  “We have a drummer from Croatia, a sax player from Haiti, a bass player from Cuba, a piano player from the U.S., a trumpet player from Paris and a singer from Poland. But they all share the same language which is jazz and it’s really high musicianship.”

“It was an honour to play with all of these musicians, it’s truly an 'All Star' band,” said Paris-based Jowee Omicil who plays Joey the saxophonist.

The first two episodes of The Eddy were directed by Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle. He insisted the jazz sessions in the club be recorded live. 

“We’re playing for real so if you’re messing up it's going to show,” Omicil recalled.  "There were many ‘one takes’!”

Glen Ballard meanwhile wanted the music to be easy to listen to, but difficult to play. Omicil said they succeeded. 

“I was telling Randy Kerber and also Glen: ‘I feel like I'm back at Berkeley, 19 years old in 1997 and I've got to learn how to play to play this music, this tradition of music, but from today’. They evolved the music, we went into pop and electronic.”

The composers didn’t want The Eddy to be a nostalgia trip to the jazz of Paris St Germain of the 50s and 60s when figures like Miles Davis found solace and respect in its jazz caverns. 

“Our jazz sits beautifully with hip hop and we have a lot of North African influences coming into our music through (French rapper) Sopico especially,” said Ballard. “We try to study the North African movement in jazz and marry it to what is a truly international band.”

Whatever the style of jazz, the important thing is to keep it live.

“We don't have a lot of times where we can have music in the forefront like that,” said Omicil, “where you could see musicians processing music and conducting their lives.” 

The series was released on 8 May when France and much of the world was still in lockdown. A pertinent time for watching musicians performing live.

“People say: ‘I'm going to The Eddy tonight’. They are actually taking the Netflix series to go and travel to places where they cannot go today,” said Omicil. “I mean you cannot go to a club and have an audience. We mustn’t forget that the audience feeds us.”

The idea of playing in empty venues "doesn't have the same dynamic".

Glen Ballard remains grateful to screenwriter Jack Thorne for allowing music to play such a central part in the drama.

“It’s truly a love letter to these incredible musicians who dedicate their whole life to learning how to play an instrument and they don’t do it for money or fame because you don’t get famous for being a jazz musician in 2020. It’s also a love letter to all the people who still want to do it, who put years of work into it for these great moments to happen on stage.”

Omicil can’t wait to get back on stage. 

“The lockdown was an unwanted lockdown, it’s as if we got locked up. And now we are excited. So we want to keep this excitement going.” 

He recorded some 15 hours of music during that time and will release an album, Lecture, this autumn.  

“It's going to be different, very controversial, perhaps. It's something I had to get out my system because it's really free music.”

He still believes in the ‘we are one’ idea he explored on his previous album “Love Matters”. But admits that in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the need to remind the world that black lives matter, we clearly haven’t reached that level of consciousness.

“We must not forget we are all creatures on this planet. It’s true we’re not there and since we're not there we’re at war. So we need to move, very wisely and carefully, with harmony. We're back to music and that's a positive note right there.”

Follow Jowee Omicilon facebook

The Eddy soundtrack is available on CD and double vinyl LP here

When Swiss beatmaker FlexFab was doing a set in the coastal town of Kilifi, Kenya, a young Kenyan rapper Ziller Bas grabbed the mike and delivered his "Swengflow". The chemistry was immediate and six months later the two artists are set to release their debut EP Mugogo! A dancefloor must.

Pablo Fernandez, who's been working under the moniker FlexFabfor a decade or so, likes to work outside his comfort zone. He's lent his beatmaking skills to Kenya's Muthoni Drummer Queen, Batuk from South Africa, rapper Rozzma from Egypt, Malaysian singer The Venopian Solitude...

In August 2019,  a Swiss music non-profit, Flee, invited him to East Africa for a series of exchanges with local musicians. During a gig in Kilifi, some 70kms north of Mombasa, Baraka Shujaa, an MC going under the name Ziller Bas couldn't resist joining in. 

"The beats were so good, I was so excited I had to jump in," the 25-year old rapper said on the line from Kilifi.

"This freestyle session with Ziller Bas was magic, the kind of moment that only happens a few times in your life," FlexFab said. He found a way to return to Kilifi in January this year with a mobile studio. In just two weeks they recorded 14 tracks, a documentary about their story and three videos. 

Their EP Mugogo part 1 has four tracks for hot club nights.

Ziller Bas lays down his vocals in his very own Swengflow: a mix of Swahili, English and his native Giriama.

The title track Mugogohas a hypnotic beat, with traditional percussion from shakers known locally as kayamba which Flexfab recorded live when doing the final mix.

"I didn't sample music, all the songs are original," he said. "There's some synthesizer, a lot of electronic things but a big part of the job I did at the end of the project was to add some live percussion."

"Mugogomeans great, like the king, someone magical, noble, with dignity," Ziller Bas explained. "It's derived from a leader here in Mijikenda called Karissa Maita."

Maita was a former tourism minister and an MP from Mombasa's kisauni area known affectionately as "Mugogo, wa pwani": Mijikenda for "Big Man of the Coast". He was a popular politician who defended the interests of coastal peoples, encouraging them to speak out about the politics of exclusion.

The track Sawa Sawa means OK in Swahili: an upbeat, positive song "about feeling good," Ziller Bas said.

Vitukomeanwhile is "very poetic and more political. It talks about challenges in the hood, in the ghetto here, how people live. It's giving people hope, talking about difficulties and telling them they shouldn't give up."

Due to the coronavirus the duo are releasing this first EP with four rather than the initial seven tracks and Mugogo part 2 should be out in the Autumn.

"When the crisis is over I hope Ziller Bas can come to Europe to do festivals with me and spread the project live. It has to be live, to be enjoyed with the people."

Mugogo part 1 is out on 12 June. Purchase it here.

Follow FlexFaband Ziller Bas on facebook

When musicians Amadou Diagne and Cory Seznec had a chance encounter in a bar in Bath in 2007, they knew one day they would record together. Thirteen years later, after many "touki" (journeys), they've embarked on a new musical adventure with a debut album Right of Passage. They talk to RFI about making new roots music with kora, banjo and guitar.

“It was a fortuitous meeting of like-minded kindred spirits,” said Seznec, a French-American singer-songwriter, guitarist and clawhammer banjoist who’s honed his sound through travels on the African continent.

He was playing in a bar with his band Groanbox when Diagne showed up with his djembe after a day of busking and the two men began improvising together.

“The energy was fantastic ... some really simple connection happened back in 2007," said Seznec.

They played gigs from time to time, Seznec bringing Diagne on board “for his percussive and harmony prowess” but it took more than a decade for them to form the duo Touki and get into the studio.

“It was always in the back of our minds that we should do something, but life took us in different directions,” Seznec continued. "And then finally the stars aligned.”

When Diagne secured a grant from the Arts Council of England, he immediately thought of Seznec.

“It my dream for a long time to do something with him,” said Diagne, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer-songwriter from near Dakar and who settled in the UK in 2004.

“I just tell him ‘hey man, come on, this is the time now, let’s do it’!”

The two musicians rehearsed in Paris and recorded 13 tunes in Peter Gabriel’s World Circuit Records studios in southwestern England.

Diagne, who was born into a Griot family of drummers and praise singers, sings in Wolof and dug deep into his own personal history for inspiration on several songs.

Yaye Bouye is about his mother dying when he was a young boy, while Tirailleurs draws a parallel between his difficult beginnings in the UK and the Senegalese Tirailleurs who fought bravely alongside French troops in various world wars. Diagne’s own grandfather, Mass Mboup, was decorated by the French for his bravery in WW2.

Two songs, Yaen Yalay and Machallah are influenced by Seznec’s three years in Ethiopia and feature Endris Hassen on the one-string bowed lute known as masenqo.

“Yaen Yalay means ‘thank you’ in Eritrean. It’s a sort of banjo percussive, instrumental track, a nod to Ethiopia and Eritrea,” said Seznec. “It has a very traditional vibe. Even though it’s banjo playing, it speaks to the krar.

“Machallah is a kind of classic pentatonic thing but has a bit of an Ethiopian traditional vibe as well. It could be East or West Africa. Amadou plays some amazing calabash on that, and sings.”

The tune Meeting at the roots is a fine example of the way Seznec’s guitar resonates with Diagne’s kora.

“It was a bit of the goal actually, to mix the kora and banjo or kora and guitar, for it to be very seamless,” said Seznec. “The idea was to sort of lock it together.”

Diagne grew up playing a traditional drum known as the saba and spent seven years as a percussionist with Senegal’s national orchestra. In line with his family griot tradition he could not play the kora, but was drawn to the sound.

"I was just watching and listening, I loved to listen to Salif Keitaand Mory Kanté,” he recalled.

When he was around eight he heard the Sissokho family playing the kora. He was on his way to a footall match but the sound stopped him in his tracks.

“I was standing in the door and I forgot I was going to play football," Diagne laughed. "The others said ‘you paid! But I tell them ‘take the money and go, I want to stay here and listen.”

Once in the UK, he began playing percussion for UK-based kora players like Jali Fily Cissokhoand Modou Ndiaye.

“I start to get the feeling of the kora,” he said. “I was sitting in the back and playing all the time. I love this rhythm.”

Touki was meant to tour the album in France and the UK this Spring but the coronavirus pandemic put paid to that.

“We’re reeling like everyone else and trying to figure out what the next step is. We’re releasing the album now, hope to create a bit of momentum and figure out when we can get back to touring. We’re shooting for the Spring of next year with a tour in May of 2021 in the UK, if all goes well.

“But basically we’ve deleted a full year and are sad about that.”

Seznec can count on Diagne’s optimism and energy to keep the duo’s momentum up.

“He’s taught me a lot, he could be like a mentor in a way because of what he’s been through. He’s just breathing and oozing music and positive vibrations. He buoys me up.”

Musicians on Right of Passage: Diagne - vocals, kora, percussion, guitar; Seznec - vocals, guitars, banjo, gourd banjo, percussion; Special Guests: Oscar Cainer - upright bass (2) Endris Hassen - masenqo (1,4,6) El Hadj Amadou Ndir - electric bass (10,11) Michael Ward-Bergeman – accordion

Right of Passage is available here.

Follow Cory Seznec and Amadou Diagne on facebook

When N'Djamena-based electro band Pulo NDJ found themselves stranded in Abuja with no chance of returning to Chad because of the coronavirus, they made their way to Lomé, set up a home studio and recorded a song about living in lockdown. Their story is one of friendship and remaining creative through the crisis.

Since the release of their acclaimed debut album Desert to Douala in March 2019, Pulo NDJ has spread its inventive blend of traditional Chadian rhythms with an electro beat around West Africa.

In March they were invited by the Institut Français in Abuja to head up DJ-ing workshops and give concerts in Nigeria.

But the coronavirus stopped them in their tracks. With borders shut, they found themselves stranded in Abuja, unable to return to N’Djamena. 

“The concert was cancelled and we had to return to Chad but Chad closed its border," said guitarist Stingo. "We got help from friends."

The band headed to his home country of Togo and found shelter at Luc’s (aka Lord Kossivi), a member of the HAPE Collective which produced the Desert to Doula album.

They were introduced to the French filmmaker, Marion Poizeau, who was also locked down in Lomé. Together they turned to music as a way of pushing back the walls.

“Luc lent them his home studio, Walid (the keyboard player) had his computer, Stingo his guitar and I lent them a mike,” said Poizeau. “We made do with what we had.”

They began writing and one song - Confinement - talks of what it feels like to be in lockdown.

It’s a pensive cream-pop song with a universal message: ‘We’re all here together, we’re stuck, we’re in lockdown,’ Poizeau sings.

“The idea was to express what we were feeling being stuck together in a house,” said the filmmaker turned backing vocalist.

“Making music was also a big help during this time, to make the time go faster and more enjoyable," she added.

Poizeau made a video for the song showing the five of them trapped inside the house, set against backgrounds of the ocean, grasslands, and an array of untrammelled wild animals.

Making music has allowed them to remain positive and break the feeling of social distancing.

“We did this to share what’s happening here and to share the way we met and created together," Poizeau said. "So even if it’s a crisis we can still be creative and produce something positive. I hope we can share our positive idea of keeping making music with the rest of the world.”

Lockdown is having a devastating impact on musicians, not least in Lomé where the night-time curfew has deprived them of the bars and music venues they would usually play in.

“It’s tough, there’s no more work, bars are closed and people can't gather more than 10 at a time, so weddings and everything is stopped,” said Poizeau. "And what’s difficult is not knowing for how long it will last. We’re all victims of the situation but for artists it is definitely a hard time.”

The band hopes to earn something from digital sales of the song Confinement, but the toll of lockdown goes beyond money.

“It’s logical that when you don’t work you don’t earn money,” said lead singer Samy aka Gari Boy. “But over and above that, your spirit feels empty when you’re not able to give pleasure, to share and have exchanges with others.

“Music is the only thing we know how to do. Not having the means to make other people happy leaves you feeling diminished. It’s disturbing.”

While they wait to be able to perform in public again, the band's makeshift studio in Lomé is where it's at.

“We set out to record one song, Confinement, but it's turned into an album,” said Poizeau. "It'll be the lockdown album."

Songs include the up-tempo Mushendo - an ode to the fuller-figured woman - sung in the colloquial Aoussa language from Cameroon.

And Woezon meaning “welcome” in the Mina language from Togo.

“It’s about welcoming a newborn but could also symbolise the birth of our album,” Poizeau explained. 

“We don’t know when or how we’ll be able to produce and promote the album,” said Gari Boy philosophically. “But we now have a box full of songs!”

Follow Pulo NDJ on facebook

Buy the song Confinement  here

Djibouti is better known as a strategic outpost than a hotbed of music but Groupe RTD, the country's national radio band, are one of its best kept secrets. By day they play at official ceremonies, off duty they let rip their love of American jazz, Indian Bollywood, Jamaican reggae and Somali funk. For the first time ever an independent label, Ostinato Records, was allowed to capture that sound and release it to the outside world on the upcoming Dancing Devils of Djibouti album. 

Since Djibouti gained independence from France in 1977, its music industry has been controlled by the state, its bands run like national enterprises.

And none more so than Groupe RTD, the official band of national radioRadiodiffusion-Télévision Djibouti(RTD), whose job it is to perform at official ceremonies.

Its music has always been recorded in RTD’s studios, conserved in its extensive archives, but has never had international release.

Vik Sohoni, producer and curator with Ostinato Records, met the band by chance in 2016 when tracing author’s rights for its compilation album of Somali music, Sweet as Broken Dates.

He found Groupe RTD at the radio’s recording studio jamming “off duty”.

“We quickly realised this was not just some national, ceremonial band, this was a very raw, gritty, tough, funky band,” he says.

“A lot of these guys were old legends and there was some young talent too. Everything that was happening in that studio was world class musicianship and we were really blown away.”

Among the older talent is saxophonist Mohamed Abdi Alto, a self-taught musician who Sohonie says deserves to be “right up there” with the world's greatest jazz instrumentalists. “He’s a national treasure, the best saxophonist in the country and possibly the most unheralded saxophone virtuoso in all of Africa.” 

Alto emerged as part of the east African scene in the 1970s as did the band’s guitarist Abdirazak Hagi Sufi “Kaajaa” and bass player Abdo Houssein Handeh.

New talent includes vocalist Asma Omar, who joined Groupe RTD after winning a youth talent competition, and Hassan Omar Houssein, also a singer.

The band performs Somali music, in Somali. But there’s a “distinct Djiboutian twist,” which comes partly from the country’s geography and history as an important trading post at the mouth of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Many cultures - but above all the Middle East and India - have left their mark on the country and its music.

“What’s incredible about Djiboutian music is not only its ability to take in all the different cultures, but what the musicians really grew up with,” Sohonie says. 

“Three styles of music that they constantly refer to, which is really the icing on top of the cake for Djiboutian music, is Jamaican music which guitarist Abdirazak listened to extensively, Indian Bollywood music and classic Indian songs which the singers said that they would watch to learn how to sing and to adapt their vocal styles and American jazz which Mohamed Abi Alto constantly referred to as his greatest influence.

“You take those three styles of music and you combine it with all the different cultures that have passed through Djibouti because of where it is and you have a really diverse cosmopolitan sound.”

Sohonie was determined to record the band, but it proved a huge challenge. The label had to wade through a web of bureaucracy and it wasn’t until 2019 that the authorities gave the green light.

RTD’s technical equipment was past it best and they flew in their own state-of-the-art mobile studio and set about recording 10 love songs, the majority written by Mohamed Abi Alto.

But further red tape meant they were left with just three days to record.

“The musicians said they knew how it goes at the top and were just very enthusiastic about having the chance to become the first band to have a commercially released album,” says Sohonie.

The intense recording sessions were fuelled by chewing copious amounts of the leaf known as khat, a stimulant popular in Horn of Africa region.

“There was a sign specifically in the radio which said ‘no khat chewing and no smoking’. The band basically said ‘if we’ve only got three days, that’s a rule we’re not gonna follow’ so they tore down the sign.”

Despite not having fewer microphones as you’d use in a European recording studio Sohonie is pleased with the result.

“In the end we were able to capture everything in a really beautiful way because that studio is where every single song that’s ever been recorded in Djiboutian history was recorded, so it has a lot of history, and therefore energy. Even if the acoustics are a bit wore down, that is really powerful.”

Ostinato Records plans to get Groupe RTD touring internationally. Until now the only cultural entity to travel abroad was the national dance troupe sponsored by Libya’s late Mouammar Kadhafi.

The coronavirus epidemic, which has affected Djibouti badly, has put tour plans on standby for the moment. But Sohonie hopes the album will “inspire the government to give the green light to be able to have the band tour all over the world, which they should".

He also has high hopes that lifting the shroud on Djiboutian music will broaden the country's image.

“There’s so much global interest in the country, but I think coverage of the country and perception of the country tend to be through the lens of geopolitics or global trade. Or perhaps there isn't any registering of any kind of image of beauty at all. So we hope this album is able to put the small but very culturally powerful country on the musical map."

He senses the country is opening up and they were able to ride that wave.

“We were able to gain access to a lot of things and I think the opening of the country and all the global interest has softened attitudes at the very senior leadership to be able to allow entities like myself and record labels to finally work with their music." 

The Dancing Devils of Djibouti is out on 5 June on Ostinato Records. A portion of the album sales will go to Djibouti's Ambassador to Germany, who helped make the recording possible, to help the country cope with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sarah McCoy is undoubtedly one of the most exuberant and talented singer-songwriters around, unafraid to bear her heart and soul in her music. "Honesty is important," says the 35-year old American. "If I were just singing about how it's sunshiny all the time, well some people can do that, but it's my job to sing about when it rains."

McCoy was picked out by a French researcher singing and playing piano in clubs and bars in New Orleans. After a few years on the road, living rough, she moved to Paris in October 2017 where producers Chilly Gonzales and Renaud Létang helped produced her debut album Blood Siren. Listen to the podcast to hear her story, along with songs from this remarkable record.

Official website here.

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Olga "Olgha" Nkweti is a singer-songwriter from the English-speaking part of Cameroon. She began singing professionally aged just 17 and has made a name crafting covers of popular songs into Pigdin English, but also writes her own soulful afro-pop compositions. She talks to RFI about composing the song Cold to draw attention to the innocent victims caught up in the Anglophone conflict.

"I decided to write Cold to create an awareness about what has been going on in the English speaking zones of Cameroon," she tells RFI's Laura-Angela Bagnetto when the two women meet in Douala. "We've had a crisis for the last three years or so, and it doesn't seem to be letting up.

"I realised there was a lot of pointing of fingers and everybody was trying to blame the other party for starting it. But there was not enough information about the victims. So I wanted a song which was going to focus on the fact that we are losing on both sides: we are losing family, we're losing friends, we are losing children and old people and helpless people. So Cold is a story about that kind of loss."

Listen to the podcast to hear how Olgha used her own experience of conflict to bring the video for Cold alive, and how the crew came face to face with the trauma so many families are facing on a daily basis. 

Olgha Nk is signed to Bimmac Sounds, a Cameroonian label based in the U.S. whose aim is to discover and develop young talent. 

Follow her on facebook and instagram

Seb el Zin founded the surrealist rock band Ithak in 2005 and it somehow manages to straddle hardcore, metal, psychedelia and traditional Turkish music with equal ease. He talks to us about why metal is ethno music, his love of dystopia and science fiction, and finding lyrical inspiration in the odd mushroom.

Seb El Zin (Seb the beautiful!) has many strings to his bow: composer, singer, musician and producer, he's frontman and guitarist with ethno-psychic punk band Ithak.

Their second album,Black Nazar Corporation (2016), is not exactly easy-listening world music. But el Zin says it's just a question of opening your mind.

"We attempt to mix industrial punk rock with some other traditional musics," he says. "In the West we have many labels like metal music, reggae, hip hop, and so on, and then all the rest is world music.

"But I consider that every music is ethno actually. Even metal is ethno music from white people from the beginning of the 90s. So in the end, there is no reason why they shouldn't be mixed with any other kind of music, maybe with Indonesian gamelan, or whatever. We all live on the same earth. Be open and see what works."

From 2011 to 2016 El Zin lived in Turkey where he learned to play a flute known as the ney and the Turkish lute known as saz, so they get thrown into the musical mix.

Before that he spent some months at Ircam(French institute specialising in avant garde electro-accoustic music) as an engineer, where he broadened his musical tastes, discovering composers like György Sándor Ligeti and Iannis Xenakis... "major composers who're aren't mainstream but who have influenced my music".

Writers like J.G. Ballard meanwhile nourished his interest in dystopia.

"I'm a big fan, he inspired all the new wave generations, Joy Division, all those bands back in the days."

El Zin also heads up the hip-hop noise cult project Anarchist Republic of Bzzz(feat. Arto Lindsay, Marc Ribot, Mike Ladd and Sensational) and has toured the U.S. with his solo album Grand Bazar. 

On 5 March he'll push his boundaries that bit further, joining Franco-Algerian mandolin maestro Hakim Hamadouche in concert at the Arabofolies festivalat the institut du Monde Arabe. Hamadouche played with Rachid Taha for more than 25 years.

"Hakim is a super open-minded person. He plays rock, blues, jazz as well as his traditional Berber chaabi music. So it wasn't complicated to have common vocabulary, we just let it happen."

Seb El Zin's official site here

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Singer-songwriter Piers Faccini's latest opus is a four-track EP Hear My Voice. And what an original voice it is. He chats to us about his artisan approach to making nourishing music, doing it his way on his record label Beating Drum and how unpleasant years at Eton public school probably helped forge his unique musical identity.

Anglo-Italian singer songwriter and guitarist Piers Faccini launched the Hear My Voice project in 2018 as a way of giving a platform to talented artists with distinct and somewhat atypical voices.

His label Beating Drum has released three vinyl EPs: Neapolitan songwriter GNUT, Tui Mamaki and Trinidadian poet and singer Roger Robinson aka Horsedreamer. 

"They have very distinctive voices," says Faccini. "And that's the notion of Hear My Voice, it's about using Beating Drum to put out and highlight the kind of voices that might not always be heard.

"Newt, for example, is a singer-songwriter who decides to sing in the Neapolitan language as opposed to Italian. Twi Mamaki is a New Zealander, but she fell in love with Bulgarian music and traditions. Horsedreamer, Roger Robinson, well we're super proud to have worked with him because he just won the T.S. Eliot poetry prize. So he's kind of the new big thing in poetry in the UK."

The fourth Hear My Voice release is Faccini’s own. And while previous albums "I dreamed an Island" (2016) and "Songs of time Lost" (2014) with cellist Vincent Segal, explored songwriting without borders, the Hear My Voice EP is more inspired by British and North American folk.

"I wanted to go back to my first inspirations in terms of songwriting. So the songs are very much coming from the African-American blues traditions and English folk music." 

Faccini's characteristic broken falsetto voice soars on the song Hope Dreams.

"The idea of hope dreams was simply the take on the idea that when someone's desperately hanging on to love and to a broken relationship, it's just completely hopeless. There's a sort of addiction to the idea of hope.

"I love canto flamenco and that whole very dramatic, nostalgic way of singing about love that you hear in the Mediterranean and also in southern Italian music. So I'm sort of taking that kind of language but using it in English." 

Vintage Faccini, the song offers comfort even as you drown your sorrows.

Faccini was an artist before he became a musician so in addition to recording and mixing his music in his home studio in the Cevennes in southern France, he also does all the artwork and packaging.

"I've identified myself as being a painter who plays music so when I started making music, I did everything that image-wise would be associated with putting out a record: from the record sleeve to a poster to making an animation video. The idea was just to go as far as I could down that line of trying to do as much myself but also just doing it in the most lovingly detailed way."

A way of not being slave to the music industry.

"You're like 'I really want to do a gatefold vinyl, and when you open it up there's an inner sleeve, and then I want to put my paintings and so on.  And then the guy from the record company is like 'yeah, that sounds great, but we can't do that, we ain't got the money'. And then you have a bit of plastic with a CD or you have the cheapest vinyl." 

The love Faccini puts into crafting his musical and artistic universe invites comparison with an organic farmer who's spent months tending the crop and then takes it trimphantly to market.

"When I started the label, I wrote a little Manifesto called 'Why music is food'.

"The basic idea is that art and music is a form of nourishment. And it's like when you buy oranges at the market, and they've been sort of mass produced and pumped full of pesticides and chemicals, they may not have the same nutritional value as ones that are grown without pesticides... in the sun as opposed to under artificial lights. So I was drawing on that parallel.

"And the parallel of a farmer who decides to be independent from perhaps a supermarket chain and decides to produce less, but better.

"The idea with creating the label is to be able to have a kind of platform where we can really share ideas and a kind of enthusiasm about making objects, making art and making music with the people that follow us." 

Faccini has worked with a myriad of musicians over the years, including Malian ngoni player Badje Tounkara on The River.

It feels like the blend of English folk and ngoni were meant to come together. Music bred in very different soil but the graft took and it makes for great listening.

Faccini's Hear My Voice is out on Beating Drum records. The new album is due out this Autumn. In concert at Le Trianon, Paris on 16 November 2020.

Follow Faccini on facebook, twitterand instagram

"Some tracks have 300 different layers of vocals and most of them are me," says Ala.ni about her new album Acca. The London-born, Paris-based singer with a rare four-octave range beguiles us with her voice. The record is mainly her, a capella. With a bit of Iggy Pop.

She talks to us about how her great uncle the singer Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson "black and bisexual in the 30's" gave her a lot of courage to be herself and "do things differently".

We chat about how Iggy Pop took a shine to her and ending up doing vocals in French on the song "Le Diplomate" inspired by a real-life encounter with ... a diplomat. 

Following the success of her debut album "You and I"she's grown a lot in confidence and now feels happy speaking her mind on a whole load of subjects.

"I’m all for calling people out right now whether it’s about sex, race or whatever. I’ve not been allowed to have an opinion for many years as a black female, this is a new thing for me. I'm like 'wow, I can talk, people listen'.

"My mum didn’t have this. She doesn't want me to talk but I will talk. So here I am."

Listen to her, in the podcast.

Follow Ala.ni on facebookand twitter

Check out the album Acca

On her latest album Lucid, Nigerian singer-songwriter Asa explores the many colours of love: warm, dark, brilliant, somber, the joy, the longing, the wanting. But also the violence that can seep into a relationship and destroy lives.

As the world wakes up to the reality of sexual violence against women, Asa's song Murder in the USA, the opening track on the album, couldn't be more pertinent. She was fully aware that femicide was getting a lot of media attention, but personal experience also pushed her to write the song.

"I grew up in Lagos seeing my parents having this problem, especially my mum, and wondering why she would have to allow herself go through that.

"I think murder in the USA is really about being aware of the signs and leaving. I feel like my mum saw the signs but she thought society expects you to be married, to be with your husband, with the children, to stay.

"Now I’m like 'no I don’t have to go through that', to buckle under the weight of society...things are changing now."

Lucid is Asa's fourth album and comes five years after Bed of Stone; five years during which she began and ended a toxic relationship. "It was a big deal in my life," she says. But she's come out stronger.

"I've come to a stage of lucidity that I don't have to stay in a relationship if I don't want to. I think I love myself more and need to invest more in that idea. I have to go against what everyone expects of me." 

Asa is on tour in Germany and France. Check out dates here

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La Mòssa are a five-piece band of female vocalists who excel at polyphonic chant. They've just released their debut album A Mòssa and talk to us about reinterpreting folksongs they love in a free and playful way in the spirit of Nina Tirabouchon, a 1920s Italian cabaret artist with hip swing to die for.

La Mòssa means movement in Italian. Listen in to find out why that suits the women so well.

La Mòssa: Lilia Ruocco, Emmanuelle Ader, Sara Giommetti, Gabrielle Gonin, Aude Marchand

Upcoming concerts: Le petit Duc in  Aix-en-Provence, 5 March 2019; Jardin de Verre in Cholet, 26 March 2019; Peniche Spectacle in Rennes 27 March 2019.

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Sona Jobarteh comes from a long West African tradition of Griots and kora players from Mali and The Gambia. She's become one of the rare women in the world to master the 21-string instrument which is traditionally reserved to men. She talks to RFI about working within the tradition to be better able to expand it.

Sona Jobarteh's grandfather was Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, an oral historian and hereditary praise singer from the Mandinka people of The Gambia. Her cousin is Mali's Toumani Diabaté. Her brother began teaching her to play the kora when she was just three, but when she decided she wanted to make a career out of it, she turned to her father Sanjally Jobarteh.

"I always had a very natural connection with the older repertoire," Jobarteh explains as we sit at her hotel before a concert in Paris's New Morning early November. "That's why I really wanted to study with my father because he is very much an expert in that style of playing."

Her father was a demanding task-master.

"He told me that he will teach me as his child, not as his daughter, not as his son but as his child which is no gender. And also he told me that the one thing he wanted in return for teaching me is that I aim to be just a good kora player not a good female kora player."

"He said if someone listens to you they shouldn’t be able to say it’s a girl or it’s a boy it’s just a good kora player."

Jobarteh has gone on to become a very successful and respected kora player, vocalist and instrumentalist, demonstrating to her own and future generations that "you don't have to conform to outside influence to be successful in the music industry."

"You can actually represent your tradition, you can even sing in your own language without having to bend to pressure not to do so."

She did just that in 2011, singing in Mandekan on her album Fasiya.

"Fasiyawas all about my heritage and I saw it as a risk or a challenge because I’m no longer singing in English, I’m no longer playing any European instruments, and it’s traditional.

"I was not sure if I would get any audience, but I made the conscious decision to prefer to do what means something to me and have very few people follow than try to conform to something that is not true to me and be popular."

Her gamble paid off. But she hasn't released another album since, putting all her energies, and finances, into the Gambia Academy of Music and Culture she returned to The Gambia to open in 2015.

The school educates children in their cultural traditions and heritage alongside the mainstream curriculum. 

She says it's important to "demonstrate the worth of what they have rather than what they don't have," so that they remain in the country rather than believing that "hope, the future and everything lies outside their country".

"The academy is actually everything I do," she continues, "and in many ways the music increasingly is now just a means for me to be able to support and to spread awareness about what I’m trying to do in The Gambia."

Music in this week's programme is from Jobarteh's 2011 album Fasiya. Her upcoming album will focus on the future: social activism, education, women and raising awareness of the challenges her country is facing.

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Emmanuel π Djob started out singing gospel in his native Cameroon and is building a successful blues-soul career in France. He heads up the six-piece AfroSoul Gang, but it’s performing alone with guitar that his gravel-rough baritone voice, raw emotion and soul really shines through. We caught him performing live on RFI's Musiques du Monde.

Emmanuel π Djob started out with Bayembi’s International, a pan African gospel formation popular in Cameroon in the 1990s.

After settling in France, he helped to revive and renew the gospel tradition, performing with the Black & White Gospel Singers and Gospelize it!

He released his debut album, Seven Minutes, in 2008, drawing on the blues, pop and rock to explore the theme of the death penalty.

He went on to record a series of albums called Terrassa’s Conversessions in 2010.

In 2013 he created a storm on the TV music talent show The Voice singing Ray Charles’ Georgia on My Mind.

“Ray Charles, Bob Marley, Fela Kuti, Hugh Masekela, they were my musical foundations,” he says. “It was normal that I sing one of Ray Charles’ songs.”

“That song meant a lot to me because I’m in exile here and it’s a song about love and exile."

In January 2016 he packed the huge Zenith concert hall in Montpellier with his band AfroSoull Gang, accompanied by the 500-strong Afro Soul Mass Choir.

He’s taking this ensemble to Cameroon in December “to Yaoundé and to Douala, just to show to people that Cameroonians can sing together, even if we have problems".

π Djob’s latest album Get on Board !is resolutely afro-soul. The stand out track is Sons of Lilith, Daughter of Kham on which he weaves the legend of a demonised woman and cursed man into an allegory of how he sees the world.

His live rendition of the song on Musiques du Monde is a treasure: the sound of a singer-songwriter possessed by the need to sing and communicate about his dispossesed African ancestors. 

Emmanuel π Djob in concert in Pessac 7/8 December 2019, with AfroSoull Gang in Montpellier 29 February 2020.

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A decade after their acclaimed album Tweet Tweet, Abraham Inc. return with Together We Stand, using their eclectic mix of klezmer, funk and hip hop to show that different religions, ages, sexes and races get along. David Krakauer, Fred Wesley and Socalled talk to RFI about how the U.S. president’s “Muslim” ban got them back in the studio making great music.

“The band is kind of crazy mix of just about anybody you can imagine,” says Socalled, a Canadian beatmaker who’s been working with Krakauer on reinventing klezmer for over a decade. 

“Men, women, black, white, brown, Latino, Africans … we have basically Jewish culture and Yiddish culture meeting African American culture. And on the song Together We Stand we invited an Arabic percussionist Mohammed Raky, so there’s Arabic percussion.”

The title track was written by Fred Wesley, master funk trombonist and James Brown's former musical director.

"Together WE stand is also the peoples of the world," Wesley says, “all races and all nationalities and all religions of the world standing together in the name of peace.

"If we all could stand together, could listen to each other we would find out we have more in common than we have differences.”

“I’m a black man and you’re a white farmer, let me just tell you what I go through and you tell me what you go through.. and it’ll be the same thing you know,” he continues, in reference to some of the hate speech that's come out of the woodwork since Trump's election in 2016.

Lullaby for Charlottesville

Socalledwrote the song Lullaby for Charlottesville in tribute to Heather Hever, killed at a white supremacist rally in 2017. 

“It’s an ode to the memory of Heather Hayer, the young woman who was murdered by someone from the white supremacist movement that Donald Trump said “there’s good people on both sides”.  It sort of paints a story in music of voices coming together to pay homage to that tragic moment in American history.” 

The Hippies were right, weren't they? 

Krakauerwrote the song The Hippies Were Right. Though he was only a teenager at the time of Woodstock, he “marched against the war in Vietnam" and hung out in East Village, an old Jewish quarter of NY popular with hippies. He was inspired by the fact they believed they could change things.

“They were protesting the Vietnam war, they were talking about defending the environment, about love among people and I thought this makes sense.

"Politically they didn’t have muscle or power. It was sad that the actual pure message of the hippies, about living life, embracing life, got perverted and smashed and commodified.”

Trying to convince through music

“What Trump did was take the sheet off of people that were kind of racist  and people that were anti-Semitic, anti-peace, people that were pro-corporate America,” says Wesley.

"Trump exposed all of these people because they all came out of the closet. And these are the people we have to convince.”

While there's a fair amount of political commentary on the album, the band aims to convince by example not by preaching or banging the table.

The instrumental track B Flat à la Socalled is a fine example of the way they find harmony in their very different musical cultures.

“This album is pretty polemical and a bit of a pulpit cry, but hopefully it’s also musically an example,” Socalled says.

“If you see on stage a bunch of people, different religions, ages, sexes, just loving each other and creating beauty that brings people together, that’s the mission of Abraham Incorporated.”

Follow Abraham Incorporated on facebook

Together we stand is out on Autre Distribution

Abraham Inc. official website
 

Nick Gold has been at the helm of World Circuit Records for close to three decades. The label has produced some of the best world music around: Buena Vista Social Club, Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré, Toumani Diabaté, Cheikh Lô ... and most recently Trio Da Kali and Fatoumata Diawara. The London-based producer has a nose for talent but maintains being allowed to work with such artists makes him the lucky one. 

In 2018, World Circuit merged with BMG and together they recently released remastered versions of four of their cornerstone albums:  Ali Farka Touré's Savane, Omara Portuondo's Buena Vista Social Club Presents, Radio Tarifa's Rumba Argelina and Guillermo Portabales' El Carretero. 

Gold reflects on three decades of helping to get great music from West Africa and Cuba to western audiences even, as he says, the musicians in question didn't need reminding it could travel!

"Musicians from Cuba and Mali value their own music, they know it's incredibly important. It's not like they need validation from outside."

He also talks to us about the magic of recording Buena Vista Social Club in Egrem studios in Havana in 1996 and driving Oumou Sangaré's pink car on the streets of Bamako.

And he might never have recorded Buena Vista Social Club, the best-selling world music record ever, had it not been for Ali Farka Touré whom he met in London in 1987 when Touré came to record his debut album with World Circuit.

The two men would go on to have a long and fruitful collaboration. Gold "facilitated" the Grammy-award winning Talking Timbuktu with Ry Cooder in 1994 and which helped establish World Circuit as a big player in the recording business. But Gold says the Mali bluesman also acted as a kind of talent scout (A&R), introducing him to new music from all over West Africa. And, thankfully, Cuba.

"It was because of Ali that I worked with Toumani Djibaté, he introduced us to Oumou Sangaré, to Dimi Mint Abba from Mauritania. And he encouraged me to listen to Cuban music so he was very important as an unofficial A&R man as well. And a real inspiration."

Listen to what it's like being a leading world music producer and extracts of the great music he's helped get out there in this week's podcast.

Check out World Circuit Records hereand follow them on facebook 

Raashan Ahmad is an American DJ, MC and hip hop artist with a big heart and a sharp mind. A thought-provoking rapper whose latest album The Sun explores joy and pain, hope and despair: the loss of his mum, the birth of his son. "Balance is something I've strived for... I can never get out of my mind how beautiful things are at the exact same time that they’re horrible." 

"Do you know what it feels like to be a black person?"  asks American comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory on the opening track No.   

Ahmad does and it hasn't always felt good. 

"The song's inspired by the police killing of black Americans in the United States," says Ahmad, "that’s pretty much it and my experience with it. I speak about being pulled over with my father when I was about seven and that was my first experience with the police."

He raps over a bed of free-jazz inspired saxophones.

"I love the Sun Ra Arkestra, Sony Rollins, Yusef Lateef ... these American jazz musicians who were playing this type of frenetic type of energy and I felt  like that was very relevant to how I felt about what’s happening now."

How do you not turn to hate when you're being singled out just because your black?

"I'm not sure how to get over that. I see the trauma and how it affected me and affects countless other black Americans. And these things are not taken into account, no one speaks about them really. You just have to bury and put it somewhere." 

Ahmad has put it into his music. The song Breathe reflects on how to cope with the physical stress that "holding in" can cause.

"Music has always been a therapy for me and I think for most musicians. And a place that feels the safest in a lot of ways."

One of his heroes is Nina Simone, a hugely talented but troubled soul if ever there was one. He does a version of her great song I Got Life.

"I love this song, she talks about the things she doesn't have,  and then she goes into all the beautiful things that she is and that she does have. It’s always touched me that song because it doesn’t leave out a part of emotion, you’re not just a happy person, not just a sad person and you can give thanks and be terribly saddened by a lot at the same time."

The experience of feeling both pain and joy, of what makes us human, is wonderfully rendered on the song The Day the Sun Came, with vocals from Keren Ann. It talks of losing his mother to cancer and the arrival of his son.

"I don’t know if I ever had the conversation I’ve had on that song with a human and so it’s very bittersweet and it’s hard to listen to, but also really joyous at the same time. 

"And the beautiful thing about this song, especially the verse about my mum passing has really touched a lot of people and it’s been really wonderful to get feedback from other people who’ve lost their parents."

Ahmad also sings on a couple of tracks, and in Wolof. Listen to the podcast to hear more about how Paris has opened up his eyes and ears to the African continent. 

Raashan Ahmad performs at Le Tamanoir, Gennevilliers on 19 October as part of the Villes Musiques du Monde festival.

Follow him on facebook

Dubbed "the golden voice of West Africa" Pat Thomas embodied the glory days of Ghanaian highlife in the 60s and 70s alongside the great Ebo Taylor. The music fell out of fashion in the 80s but Thomas never stopped singing. He made a much-praised comeback in 2015 with the Kwashibu Area Band thanks to Ghanian musician and producer Kwame Yeboah and together they've now released another gem: Obiaa! (Everyone). 
 

Listen to Thomas and Yeboah, two generations of highlife, discussing their love of the music, where the "high" in highlife came from and how the younger generation is discovering the importance of this music, the precursor to Nigeria's afrobeat.

"They themselves realise you have to go back to the roots," says Thomas. "We're doing lots of collaborations and it's working out good."

Obiaa! is out on Strut Records.

Pat Thomas and the Kwashibu Area Band are on a European tour. You'd be a fool to miss them live. Check out their facebook page for details.