The best from Africa in 2015

For the final rendez-vous of 2015 on cambridge 105 a specially curated playlist of the best music released from Africa this year.

Rendez-vous à Bobo December 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

From azonto to afrobeat and my 2015 WOMAD highlight Tal National

The Story of Kwaito

In this month's podcast for cambridge105.fm I'm telling the story of /Kwaito/ South Africa's homegrown house music sung in township slang known as tsotsitall.

An attitude and fashion as much as a musical movement, kwaito was born in the townships in the mid-nineties and early exponents such as Bongo Maffin represented those who came after age after apartheid.

Rendez-vous à Bobo November 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Offering a commentary on the difficulties of urban life, kwaito adds authenticity to Gavin Hood's 2005 film Tsotsi, an adaptation of a novel by Athol Fugard.

The sound, style and sensibility of kwaito were also borrowed  by Beyonce's little sister Solange for her song and video for `Losing You.

Black History Month & Fiesta de Suds

In October's podcast Ari Henry from Cambridge City Council makes a rendez-vous to talk about Black History Month and why we celebrate it plus a playlist inspired by Malian supergroup Les Amazones d'Afrique whose debut concert I attended in Marseille earlier in the month.

Rendez-vous à Bobo October 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Saluting African Cinema

This autumn The Cambridge African Film Festival returns to the city for its 14th edition. To find out more I made a rendez-vous with festival director Estrella Sendra to talk films, audiences and why we need to salute African cinema. Plus music from Seun Kuti, Youssou N'dour and Cesária Évora and news of Africa on the square

Rendez-vous à Bobo September 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

The life and times of Fela Kuti

Pan-Africanist, rascal and father of Afrobeat Fela Anikulapo Kuti passed away on the 2nd of August 1997.

This August Rendez-vous à Bobo on Cambridge 105 celebrates the music he created and his legacy transmitted by sons Seun and Femi and his faithful drummer Tony Allen.

Fela's influence can be heard in the explosion of Afrobeats the homegrown British music created by diaspora and second generation Africans, whilst the iconic album covers by Ghariokwu Lemi which illustrated his mischievous pidgin commentaries also remain remarkably contemporary.

Rendez-vous à Bobo July 2015 A `Felabration' by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

A WOMAD 2015 teaser

For this month's community radio programme on Cambridge 105 we look at the African artists performing at the 2015 Womad festival.

Rendez-vous à Bobo June 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Cheikh Lo is one of a trio of maverick musicians to appear.

A true original, Cheikh's music is as myriad as his patchwork clothing known as`niahaas' which identifies him as a follow of Senegal's Baye Fall Sufi brotherhood.

A drummer and timbale player Lo was born in Burkina Faso's second city Bobo Dioulasso to Senegalese parents and moved to Senegal in his 20's. His debut album Ne la Thiass (gone in a flash) released in 1995 set the blueprint for a highly distinctive and lilting music which draws on the homegrown Senegalese `rock music' Mbalax whilst borrowing elements of Cuban music.



Debuting songs from new album Balbalou which features Brazilian vocalist Flavia Coelho and Mali's Oumou Sangaré, Cheikh Lo's set at WOMAD 2015 is not to be missed.

Another delightfully idiosyncratic performance is likely to come courtesy of collective Atomic Bomb. A live project featuring Sinkane and former Beastie Boy's keys player Money Mark, Atomic Bomb is a celebration of the baffling yet brilliant music of the enigmatic Nigerian electronic musician William Onyeabor.

An early adopter of synthesisers, Onyeabor self released eight records between 1978 and 1985 on which he played all of the instruments.

Spacey and cinematic with lyrics in pidgin English Onyeabor's music has since achieved cult status and his records are coveted by DJ's and collectors. The personnel for WOMAD remains like Onyeabor, a mystery, but Atomic Bomb are another must see.

London born, Brooklyn based  with Sudanese heritage Sinkane is confirmed for Atomic Bomb

Finally new World Circuit signing Mbongwana Star are a group who personify authenticity and the defiant energy of the Congolese capital Kinshasa. The collective whose name means `change' bring their Afro Punk ethos to an edition of WOMAD that is all about originality          

A rendez-vous with Africa Together

For this month's community radio programme on Cambridge 105 I made a rendez-vous with Eva Namusoke to hear about Africa Together a conference re-imagining Africa from the media to fashion at Cambridge University on Friday 5th June.

Rendez-vous à Bobo May 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Plus music from  Cape Verde via Lisbon care of Sara Tavares, The Four Brothers from Zimbabwe, and from South London Fuse ODG.

  

A Rendez-vous on The River Nile

At 4,258 miles long The Nile River waters 11 countries including Sudan, Ethiopia and Congo Kinshasa.

For April's show on Cambridge 105 we travel The Nile with music from Alsarah of The Nile Project, the artistic and environmental collective created in 2011 to inspire, educate and empower Nile citizens, facilitating artistic exchange and ecological conversation.

A Rendez-vous on The River Nile by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Prendre mon cadeau - A coupé-decalé special

In Ivorian slang Coupé-Décalé means to cut and run, effectively to cheat someone and get away with it. The attitude and style of this electronic music which evolved in Abidjan and Paris in the early 2000's is of bravado, and If it’s not slightly distorted it’s not being played loud enough as I once found out on a six hour bus journey from Bobo Dioulasso to Ouagadougou. 

You can't say its subtle, but like the music of the griot which we looked at last time on Cambridge 105 it does comment on society, and it certainly makes people move. 

Rendez-vous à Bobo April 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

A rendez-vous with Trio Da Kali

For Cambridge 105 this month I made a rendez-vous with Mali's Trio Da Kali on tour for Making Tracks.

Photo Credit: World Circuit Records

Hear Bamako's go-to bala fola Lassana Diabaté in conversation reflecting on a griot's responsibility as mediator and messenger, plus news of Ebola Call And Response a musical statement of solidarity raising funds for Medecins Sans Frontieres and Save The Children

Photo Credit: Penny Lutoslawska

Rendez-vous à Bobo March 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Trio Da Kali at The Junction Cambridge 21.2.15

A griot’s job description is rather diverse. Musician, historian, town crier, the hereditary bards or djeli of West Africa are revered for their skill. Billed as the `new generation of griot soul’ Trio Da Kali from Mali showcased this craft to The Junction Saturday night leaving Cambridge in awe.

The latest offering from world music promoters Making Tracks,Trio Da Kali’s concert began with the clear vibrato voice of Hawa Kasse Mady Diabaté singing an a capella welcome. Joined by Balafon (xylophone) player Lassana Diabaté and Mamadou Kouyaté on three stringed N’goni lute, the musicians wove regal melodies around Hawa’s haunting voice whilst she provided percussion, tossing and catching a Yabara calabash shaker. 

Explaining in French that the trio formed to `revive this music before it disappears’ the first half consisted of songs of advice and responsibility sung in Bamanakan, typical of the repertoire for which Hawa is in high demand at wedding parties in Mali’s capital Bamako. Dressed in the stiff damask or bazin cotton reserved for such occasions, the trio glowed in every sense.

As Lassana played bright runs and arpeggios on his buzzing balafon, Mamadou answered by expressively fretting his n’goni, whilst even Hawa’s humming was magnificent, eliciting shouts of `namu!’ (indeed!) from serenely smiling Lassana.

Speaking before the show, musical director Lassana explained `before radio, internet or telephone, the griot was all of these’ and stressed the djeli’s role as messenger and mediator. Asked if life had returned to normal after the recent crisis in Mali he replied positively but with the griot’s economic eloquence `it’s easy to make war, but not easy to make peace.’

After an interval in which many purchased the group’s eponymous EP released by World Circuit Records, the group returned for a second half consisting of celebratory danceable numbers such as` Yirimadjo’ a homage to the Bamako neighbourhood where Lassana resides. Kicking of her heels, beaming Hawa who in the first half had been as commanding as any teacher, proved the griot know how to party as well as advise.

Closing with `Eh Ya Ye’ a song by her famous father Kasse Mady Diabaté, Hawa, Lassana and Mamadou (whose curled slippers were straight out of One Thousand and One Nights) humbly received the audience’s overwhelmed ovation.

Originally commissioned and published by Local Secrets

Arrested Development at Cambridge Junction 19.2.15

`Refusing to plateau’ 

With big smiles and even bigger hair, hip hop collective Arrested Development performed a back to back set of mash ups from their twenty year career at The Junction on Thursday proving they still have much to say.

The live band plus beat maker dropping samples from a be-stickered flight case tumbled on stage led by front man Speech in a colourful mix of Afrocentric fashion for which they are known.  Opening with the proverbial `Give a man a fish’ the band didn’t pause for breath until 4 songs in with Speech flanked by two backing vocalists styling T Shirts asserting `Racism sucks’ rhyming his way through `fishing for religion’ and other hits as a heavy fatback drummer played steady as a metronome.

Releasing their debut album 3 years, 5 months and 2 days in the life of Arrested Development back in 1992 it was clear from the outset that Arrested Development were different. With positive lyrics and playful sampling of the likes of Prince and Sly And The Family Stone the group arrived with a sense of fun in common with artists like De La Soul, providing an antidote to the bragging and gangsterism of the era’s B Boys. Indeed Arrested development included girls, and seemed more like an extended family in music videos which depicted them down on the farm rather than downtown. Forget the East Coast/West Coast feuding, this was Southern hip hop.

Thanking the audience for `coming to explore and discover what Arrested Development are about’ Speech proved as outspoken as ever in his raps, encouraging community, creativity and respect true to the group’s name which references stunted progress resulting from racism, poverty and community self-sabotage.

Engaging the obliging audience in call and response scat singing, Speech shared the stage equally with the two backing singers, notably Fareedah Aleem who animated the Cambridge audience on this wet evening with her West African inspired dance.

The band were tight and good players but the problem with this gig in J1 was the volume which far exceeded that of the band’s bountiful natural hair.

The mix lacked balance and definition meaning Speech’s quick-fire eloquence was hard to appreciate whilst the guitar of J J Boogie also lost nuance.

Nonetheless the group’s stamina was admirable, as is their longevity and ongoing social engagement which continues through their own Mr Wendal Foundation for America’s homeless.        

Commissioned and first published by Local Secrets magazine

A rendez-vous with Hannah Oghene

For Cambridge 105 this month I made a rendez-vous with the curator of a recent exhibition at Changing Spaces Hannah Oghene.

Plus a meeting of two very different harps from Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita, afrobeat old and new and an introduction to the satirical commentary of Fela Kuti known as yabis. Plus we look forward to Trio Da Kali's forthcoming gig at Cambridge Junction.

Rendez-vous à Bobo February 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

In praise of Mr Chiwetel Ejiofor

The National Theatre have announced their new season including Chiwetel Ejiofor in Everyman. I last saw Ejiofor in The Young Vic's astonishing A Season In The Congo here revisited. 

A Season in The Congo At The Young Vic Thursday 11th July 2013

The lights go down suddenly suggesting a tropical power cut and we find ourselves in The Congo as independence dawns. Seated cabaret style in a drained swimming pool with oil drums for tables, The Young Vic is merrily festooned with strings of coloured bulbs, evoking the bright exhalation of independence that too soon will dim to the sinister terror of Mobutu's Zaire.

But that's all in the future and A Season In The Congo begins as independence springs.

Written in 1966 by Aimé Césaire the play recounts the tragic trajectory of Congo's first president Patrice Lumumba deposed in a coup after just twelve weeks in office.

Sporting a crisp parting and perfectly pressed trousers we first meet Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lumumba as a charismatic travelling salesman hawking beer rather than Pan Africanism. With a restless energy and gift for oratory it's clear he is destined for bigger things than beer.

Cheered on by a cast costumed in juxtaposed wax prints with army fatigues, Lumumba's legend grows as does Ejiofor's, inhabiting the role here with conviction as he rebukes the departing Belgians for making "laundry boys" of men and promising to "straighten every crooked thing." Singing a lullaby to his wife he picks sweet guitar lines to soothe her nightmares, but far away rumbles of the changing season and Lumumba's peripeteia can be heard.

Weaving puppetry and music brilliantly into the narrative the direction is as dapper as Lumumba himself, whilst Daniel Kuluuya becomes genuinely menacing as Mobutu and Ejiofor seems to surpass himself with every role.

In a closing scene of gravitas, Lumumba's former friends sit at a table suggesting the last supper and silently pass a plastic basin washing his assassination from their hands and so concluding our tumultuous season in The Congo.

A digital scrapbook part one

A selection of published and broadcast contributions

 

Reader profile in Songlines magazine

 

 

 

 

Clear Spot Extra at 8.50pm – We Must Dare to Invent the Future – by Lucas Keen

June 26th, 2013 · 

The Clear Spot is a little short of the usual hour tonight, so it is followed at 8.50pm by a new short documentary feature. We Must Dare to Invent the Futureby Lucas Keen tells the story of the making of an album in West Africa earlier this year for which Keen was supported by the Arts Council and British Council to travel to Burkina Faso. It’s an affirming story of friendship and perseverance told against the backdrop of the crisis in neighbouring Mali.

Radio feature broadcast on Resonance FM

Radio transcript published on British Council Voices

Picasso in a pickle

A one door farce at Corpus Playroom in Cambridge

A bizarre episode in art history provides the farcical subject for an hour of surreal student theatre complete with quick dialogue and mischief with pamplemousses at Cambridge’s Corpus Playroom until Saturday.

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  Picasso stole the Mona Lisa, billed as a `one- door tragi-farce’, is based on the audacious theft of the iconic Mona Lisa from The Louvre. This absurd incident thus provides excellent material for writer Jamie Fenton. There’s some decent clowning, and a few great lines, and the hot jazz of Django Reinhardt propels our players through this light hour of silliness.
  
  
  Showing at the cosy Corpus Playroom until Saturday 24 January, a dishevelled artist’s garret provides the setting sparely furnished with a chaise longue and a covered easel. This is the Parisian boudoir of enfant terrible Guillaume Apollinaire, novelist, poet and sometime journalist who once called for The Louvre to be burnt down and who stumbles through the single door of the `L’ Shaped playroom and into a pickle. 
  
  
  That covered easel turns out to be the Mona Lisa, and Apollinairee played by Haydn Jenkins and bohemian buddy Picasso (Yaseen Kader) are baffled as to how the renaissance masterpiece came to be in their shabby apartment. And so the farcical fun begins.
  
  
  At this juncture it may be worth explaining the episode upon which this anarchic comedy by it’s own admission is loosely based.
  
  
  In September 1911 the world was shocked by the theft of the Mona Lisa from The Louvre. Former gallery employee Vincenzo Peruggia would later cite patriotic reasons for the theft but would evade capture for two years by which time he had returned with the painting to their native Italy and shared his humble lodgings with the most famous painting in the world.
  
  
  So how did those two starving artists come to be involved?
  
  
  Apollinaire was arrested for aiding and abetting Peruggia whom he sheltered in his apartment and under questioning implicated his friend Pablo Picasso. Nonchalant cubist Picasso unimpressed by Da Vinchi’s masterpiece at one point receives a dressing down from Apollinaire ‘You’re just jealous because your oeuvre is not in The Louvre.’
  
  
  The enjoyable posturing pairing of Picasso and Apollinaire are realised well by Jenkins and Kader as skinny and shambolic, and an excellent sepia tinted silent film projected onto the playroom wall showing our hapless heroes attempting to dispose of the painting is a hoot. Colin Rothwell as a gendarme and frustrated art history scholar is excellent.
  
  
  Set around the same period but altogether more serious, Albert Camus’ Les Justes also at Corpus (10^th-14^th February) promises another highlight at this intimate venue where very reasonably priced tickets mean it’s always worth taking a chance. 
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• Commissioned and first published by Local Secrets
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`Mama-dada rolls' WHIPLASH a film review

My first drum tutor was forever sympathetic and encouraging, teaching me the rudiments via onomatopoeia. Thus a double stroke roll (right right, left left) became a `mama, dada’ roll.

In Damien Chazelle’s Oscar tipped jazz drama Whiplash JK Simmons plays a conservatoire tyrant and bully personified, determined to push drumming prodigy Miles Teller to his limit at any cost be it violence or exploiting what he discovers of his young charge’s parents. 

Whiplash (the title refers to a jazz standard providing a musical motif throughout) opens with Andrew Neiman (Teller) practicing a single strong roll rudiment that accelerates as our narrative will.  Fiercely focussed but with few friends, Neiman is a student at a top New York music school his only other diversion watching movies and sharing popcorn with his devoted Dad who is as supportive and non- prescriptive as Simmons character Terence Fletcher is cruel and critical.     

In his fitted black t-shirt Fletcher leads the school’s first band and is notorious for his vicious perfectionism, ejecting musicians from rehearsal without mercy. Following a chance encounter Neiman is invited to join the band and so begins a thrilling confrontation between the two.

Shot in just over two weeks, director writer Chazelle makes excellent use of dimly lit subterranean basement rehearsal rooms to lend claustrophobia to the story. At first Fletcher seems reasonable and almost cuddly as in previous hit Juno, coaxing Andrew as he sits eager to please on the drum stool with `not quite my tempo’.  But as quick as the changes on the musical score he segues into a psychopath.

A relationship begins in parallel or maybe that should be paradiddle (apologies for another rudiment reference) providing Andrew with a conflict. He takes his girl on a date to a pizza joint but his idea of conversation is to name the personnel on the record in the background. Somehow though, she’s charmed. 

If there is a single problem with the film it’s that we don’t see this relationship really develop so when Andrew inevitably ends it as a distraction, we are as invested in it as he has allowed himself to become.   

With a brilliant soundtrack and central performances arrived at through method acting (Teller took intensive drums lessons and plays for real in the film) Whiplash considers the rage against mediocrity and asks if it is ever justifiable to push so hard or sacrifice so much. 

Celebrating World Circuit Records

The first Rendez-vous à Bobo of 2015 tells the story of how music from Mali, Sudan and Zimbabwe first visited the U.K and was invited to stay, and of the British labels and DJ's who opened listener's ears.

Rendez-vous à Bobo January 2015 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud