...De ce monde est une prise de position d'une richesse poétique rare et une ballade expérimentale qui nous explose les sens, tout en nous faisant cogiter, sans filtre ni standard d'aucune sorte.
Entre coups de coeur, coups de gueule et coups de blues, Bams élève sa tribune et nous offre un superbe album de rap!
One evening in January 2004, spurred on by a sort of rumour that had started a short time ago, I called in at the Satellit Café, a live music nightclub in Paris’ Oberkampf district, terrific at launching young ‘world music’ hopefuls. And there, a shock. The kind of discovery that doesn’t even happen once a year: Mayra Andrade, redefining her country, Cape Verde’s musical contours with grace, self-assurance and, rare for a girl not even 20 years old, with a great sense of measure. Admittedly, it is thanks to Cesaria Evora that we all know where this archipelago is (500km off the coast of Senegal) and have discovered little by little that this parched land sings in many parts, abundant with rhythms, Morna, Coladera, Funana, Batuque, and that it is rich with authors and performers who have rarely remained in their country, but have rather settled far from home, sometimes in exile.
Mayra is not an exile. She has been living in Paris since 2003 and her parents gave her a taste for being constantly on the move: born in Cuba, she grew up between Senegal, Angola, Germany and… Cape Verde too. The first nursery rhymes of her childhood years were Brazilian. But it was with a song from her own country, in Cape Verdean Creole, that she won the Gold Medal in the Francophonie Games held in Canada, competing against 35 other contestants. She was 16. Mayra Andrade went from concert to concert, in Praia and Mindelo (Cape Verde) then in Lisbon. In France from 2002, she went from Paris’ small venues to the major summer festivals. She was also the supporting act for Cesaria Evora at the New Morning. In Brazil she represented her country once again on a single released in support of the fight against AIDS, with Lenine and Chico Buarque amongst others. In 2005 Charles Aznavour invited her to sing on his new album in a duet in French. Wherever she went, she captivated.
The rumour ballooned, and yet still no record. The situation became critical. Mayra, who has character, didn’t give in to the pressure and, rather than succumb to the lure of unreliable productions, preferred to wait for a more solid proposal. It finally came her way in 2005. So here is “Navega”, “upon the waves”. A treat of an album, a far cry from huge productions. On the contrary, it goes for simplicity and is almost completely acoustic. An album in which she fiercely asserts her freedom. Admittedly 93% of the album draws from the archipelago’s national tongue, but this is a record by an urban Cape Verdean who, what’s more, is Parisian.
Hence she dug into this abundant Parisian breeding ground, alongside two of its figureheads (the Cameroonian bass player Etienne Mbappé and her stage cohort, the Brazilian percussionist Zé Luis Nascimento), and took with her a remarkable compatriot guitarist, Kim Alves. Some selective high-flying guests : the Brazilian virtuoso Hamilton de Holanda (bandolim, the local mandolin), the Malagasy imp Régis Gizavo (accordion), the cellist Vincent Segal (one half of Bumcello), her stage accomplices, Brazilian guitarists Tarcisio Gondim and Nelson Ferreira. As a bonus, a song in French, the only one, written by the unexpected Téte "Comme s'il en pleuvait", in a playful rendition. An album subtly produced by an expert of the genre, Jacques Ehrhart (Henri Salvador, Camille, …).
These jazz, Afro and Brazilian ingredients lend other tones to music that in part comes from the archipelago (four are written by the colossal songwriter Orlando Pantera, recently departed, while others come from the country’s young talent). Three other tracks emanate from the nimble pen of Mayra Andrade herself (one in collaboration with Patrice Larose). So when going through this record, glean the translations of the lyrics in these liner notes. The dramatic rubs shoulders with the mischievous, exile in which you lose your head comes up against democracy losing its mind, ageless characters cross paths with figures from another age.
With “Navega”, in a voice made to overwhelm souls and sway hearts, standing at the helm Mayra rules her world and surfs…(upon the waves) to conquer the seas and lands.
Far away from ephemeral fashions and marketing noise, the kaleidoscope of world music focuses regularly on an emblematic artist from an unrecognized region. This spring, Reunion Island is under the spotlights with one of its richest musicians, Davy Sicard, adept of a spellbinding modern “maloya”, where the different components of a multiple-origin people are reflected : India and Madagascar of course, but also Africa and Europe.
Far away from ephemeral fashions and marketing noise, the kaleidoscope of world music focuses regularly on an emblematic artist from an unrecognized region. This spring, Reunion Island is under the spotlights with one of its richest musicians, Davy Sicard, adept of a spellbinding modern “maloya”, where the different components of a multiple-origin people are reflected : India and Madagascar of course, but also Africa and Europe.
The wildly successful Red Hot + Blue project, featuring such world-class artists as U2, Annie Lennox, Tom Waits, and Sinead O’Connor, and such acclaimed directors as Wim Wenders, Alex Cox, and Jonathan Demme, is finally being released with the care that it deserves. Originally issued in 1990, the Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute To Cole Porter album created massive media attention for AIDS relief and became the first release in a 15-album series. An eclectic musical homage to the legendary songwriter Cole Porter, it went platinum, spent 24 weeks on the Billboard charts, and generated $3 million dollars for AIDS charities worldwide, but its companion piece, a VHS collection of music videos, was somewhat relegated to the shadows. That changes with the 2-disc Special Edition package of Red Hot + Blue, which contains all the music videos on a DVD and the album, complete with a much-needed remastering, on a CD, both in the same package.
DVD Program Listing:
1. David Byrne—Don’t Fence Me In
2. Neneh Cherry—I’ve Got U Under My Skin
3. Jimmy Somerville—From This Moment On
4. Jody Watley—After You, Who?
5. Salif Keita—Begin The Beguine
6. Erasure—Too Darn Hot
7. Sinead O’Connor—You Do Something To Me
8. The Jungle Brothers—I Get A Kick Out Of You
9. The Neville Brothers—In The Still Of The Night
10. k.d. lang—So In Love
11. Les Negresses Vertes—I Love Paris
12. Aztec Camera—Do I Love You?
13. Debbie Harry & Iggy Pop—Well, Did You Evah!
14. Lisa Stansfield—Down In The Depths
15. Kirsty MacColl & The Pogues—Miss Otis Regrets / Just One Of Those Things
16. Tom Waits—It’s All Right With Me
17. U2—Night And Day
18. Annie Lennox—Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye
19. Bill Irwin—Comedy Sketches
20. Annie Lennox—Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye (Live on VH1 Honors)
Tony Allen is one of the greatest drummers on the planet - the man who created Afrobeat with Fela Kuti.
24 years after leaving Fela’s band he remains a restless and potent trail blazer for new African musical adventures.
Tony Allen’s small and wiry frame contrasts with the powerful and transcendent force he radiates. On stage, behind that massive drum kit he’s serenely controlling the band. Compulsively watchable, you don’t want to miss a beat. Off stage he’s still radiating ...cool, focussed, controlled, a man on a mission. And that’s how its always been, even when he was growing up in Lagos through the 1940’s and 50’s, before he discovered the drums which changed his and our lives. His righteous character and iron self-discipline meant he had his own path to forge, passionately believing he was going somewhere. So he turned away from brief but promising careers as student, mechanic and electronic engineer, inevitably turning towards music. Music had always been around his home. His father, an automobile engineer, listened to Juju and other indigenous Yoruba music on the radio and at celebrations, often singing and playing instruments himself at home with his kids. But the teenage Tony was out at Lagos night spots digging the new Highlife sounds: Nigerian acts like Rex Lawson and wikkid Ghanaian acts like the Ramblers and E.T. Mensah. He was hooked....but he had no drumkit. No musicians in Lagos could afford their own instruments. They belonged to the clubs and hotels and you had to be hired by the house band if you wanted to get your eager hands on the sticks and your restless feet on the pedals. ‘Sir’ Victor Olayia (aka Evil Genius of Highlife) was the man who lit Tony’s fuse. His band, the Cool Cats, gigged around Nigeria throughout the 50’s in the wake of Mensah Highlife hysteria. He always had an eye for young talent. A certain Fela Ransome Kuti had sung with him for a couple of years, before he left for London to study music. Tony hung out with the Cool Cats and started playing claves. His big chance came when the drummer left and their new leader Sivor Lawson offered him the sticks.
His smouldering sense of mission had found a life long goal: to be the best, to keep on searching for his own sound. ‘I just wanted to sound like me...but I didn’t know what that sound was.’ He practised, studied, played countless all night sessions - ‘You gotta work hard if you really want to be the best’- and he listened constantly to US Jazz on record and on the radio. If Art Blakey was his god, Jesus was undoubtedly drum pioneer Kofi Ghanaba (aka Guy Warren of Ghana) who had taken Afro-ryddims live and direct to jazz stars like Dizzy, when he gigged in the US through the fifties. After the Cool Cats disbanded, he played with Agu Norris and the Heatwaves, the Nigerian Messengers and the Melody Makers. Then in 1964, a guy came round and asked him to come and audition for a Jazz DJ at Nigeria Broadcasting, some cat called Fela Kuti, who was looking for the right drummer for his jazz-highlife band, Koola Lobitos. Fela was just back from 4 years of studying Music Theory and trumpet at Trinty College, London. He’d also got bitten real bad by the jazz bug while he was there. ‘That’s why he wanted me. After the audition Fela said, ‘How come you are the only guy in Nigeria who plays like this - Jazz and Highlife?’ ’ Together they were going to create some of the most significant music of the twentieth century, Afrobeat. Fela’s personality was ideal for a front man/band leader/guru: visionary, exuberant, iconoclastic, motor mouthed, control freak, touched with genius. But the cool, taciturn Tony complemented him just as his drum patterns complemented and catalysed Fela’s songs and arrangements.
‘Fela used to write out the parts for all the musicians in the band (Africa ’70). I was the only one who originated the music I played. He tried to write it for me but we both knew it didn’t sound so good that way. Fela said I sound like 4 drummers.’ By the mid-seventies, Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the African superstar - undoubtedly the coolest, hippest, best known African musician on this planet, at that time, both inside and outside of Africa. His iconic status as African Musical Rebel Warrior Genius had champions’ league western musicians like Paul McCartney, Bootsy Collins, Ginger Baker, and James Brown’s entourage flocking to worship at The Shrine. That was the name of Fela’s Lagos club - the Mother of All Good Times - where its resident superstar developed Afrobeat before the very ears of the punters, in an apparently endless series of epic stage shows filled with drums, musicians ,dancers and radical politics, while the customary Shrine spliff vendors completed the picture. But as the seventies wore on, Tony could not shake his steadily growing disillusionment with Africa ’70 and the lack of recognition Fela gave him, even though Tony was leader of the band and provider of the prime element – those drum patterns that underpinned the whole mighty edifice. ‘What makes me decide it’s time to go? It’s … everything...and (his)carelessness....like he doesn’t care, like he doesn’t know ...he doesn’t feel he’s done anything(wrong). And with all the parasites around too.... there were 71 people on tour by now and only 30 working in the band....you got to ask why. Those guys were sapping Fela of his Force, of his Music.’ So Tony moved on, once again in search of his own sound. Fela had to find 4 drummers, one man just couldn’t replace Allenko on an all night set!
First thing for Tony was an all drummer show with Khofi Ghanaba at National Theatre in Lagos (find the tapes someone please!), checking out his roots and then he cut the still compelling No Discrimination album. The ’80’s saw him playing with King Sunny Ade in London, Ray Lema in Paris and releasing his own Afrobeat gem, NEPA. The ’90’s saw him working on the dub soaked, future Afrobeat of the Black Voices album for far sighted and hip Comet Records, produced by Doctor L, incendiary DJ and pillar of the Parisian electronica elite. As the new century came round, Tony gave us the deconstructed jazzy Afrobeat of Psycho On Da Bus.
Meanwhile Afrobeat has been breaking out all over. Fela could have been prophesying about Afro beat when he spoke about the future of African music in 1992 ‘It will break into the world, but it will take its time….because that’s the best way for the music to break. The gods do not want the music to break into the international scene as a fashion ….(but) as a serious cultural episode’ Since Fela’s death in 1997, Afrobeat has been enjoying a new serious cultural episode. It’s horizons continue to restlessly expand. The Groove has become a Temple where many worship - artists like Fela’s sons, Femi and Sean, New York rebel collective Antibalas, Andres Levin , Dele Sossimi, keyboard player for Fela’s Egypt ’80 and Femi’s Positive Force. There’s been Afrobeat subversion of the dance floors of New York through the work of DJ/remixer/producers like Masters at Work and Joe Clausell and in London and Paris, Ashley Beadle, Da Lata, IG Culture, the Shrine Synchrosystem and Zenzile have made the made the dance floor feel the force. It’s simultaneously grown into a widely used jazz form and a dance floor style. Clubs, labels and compilations which celebrate Fela, Afrobeat and Nigerian Afro Rock are seizing the time and pushing up shoots into the balmy Afrobeat springtime.
Biography
Known by Badu as ‘JuneBugg’, he was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. Geno Young had a musical family and began playing violin and piano and an early age. He established his talents in the Arts Magnet High School were he studied in the same class rooms as Roy Hargrove and Norah Jones. Afterwards he attended Howard University in Washington, D.C. Here he would perfect his song writing skills, production techniques and form his love for Soul music. Having studied his craft he found himself later touring the world as musical director, arranger and producer for the multiple Grammy award winners, Erykah Badu. He produced songs for the 2001 album ‘Mama’s Gun’, with ‘Times a Wastin’, and my favourite ‘Orange Moon’. He also produced for N’Dambi on ‘Tunin’ Up and co-signin’ and most recently Carmen Rodgers ‘Free’ album released on Expansion Records. This artist offers very much to the industry and music lovers. Look out for ‘the Ghetto Symphony’, released in 2004 on AB Records.
t's rare that an artist arrives onto the pop music scene so fully loaded with the kind of hit-making potential that singer-composer-guitarist Raúl Midón possesses. The New Mexico-born, New York-based Midón makes his recording debut with State of Mind, produced by Arif Mardin and Joe Mardin for Manhattan Records. The 13-track collection of Midón originals is a remarkable mélange of soul, R&B, pop, folk, jazz and Latin. The CD places on display his earnest, lyrical songwriting; full-bodied vocals steeped in soul; a singular syncopated, flamenco- and jazz-infused acoustic guitar style; a unique vocal trumpet improvisation; and hopeful disposition.
While you can hear traces of Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, Jose Feliciano and, Richie Havens in his music, Midón is an extraordinary original whose passion is expressed in his indelible songs. "I like to celebrate the possible, the highest, the best of possibilities for human beings," says Midón, who has been blind since birth and is the son of an African American mother and an Argentinean father. "It's easy to be pessimistic given the state of the world. But I'm inspired by people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi who had the ability to transform. Collectively we create an enormously powerful force that can change the world and overcome any obstacle."
State of Mind is a revelation. The CD not only trains the spotlight on Midón's buoyant delivery, but also boasts a guest roster featuring Stevie Wonder (a guest harmonica performance on "Expressions of Love") and Jason Mraz (a vocal duet on their collaborative song, the reggae-inflected "Keep on Hoping"). In addition there are contributions from Latin jazz flutist Dave Valentin and percussionist Sammy Figueroa (on the Afro-Cuban sizzling "I Would Do Anything."), harmonica ace Gregoire Maret and percussionist Cyro Baptista (on the exuberant "Sunshine") and jazz vibraphonist Stefon Harris, who performs on the sublime "All in Your Mind." This last song is Midón's way of opening a window on what it's like to be blind. "I wrote 'All in Your Mind' to talk about how, when you're blind, you perceive everything through your imagination."
The overarching sensibility of Raúl Midón's auspicious premiere, State of Mind, is a sunny optimism‹that despite the dark days there is a light. "Part of our mission as artists, besides entertaining," Midón says, " is to say something positive, without preaching, to our audience, whether it numbers in the hundreds or millions."
1. Mise à Nu
2. Dans La Chaleur des Nuits de Pleine Lune
3. Men Voulez-Vous?
4. Jeunesse Affamée
5. Tes Beau
6. Quand Je Suis Ivre
7. Je Suis Floue
8. Je Ferai Sans
9. Larmes
10. Tita
11. Femme Fossile
12. Mal Assis
tastemaker 
