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Beiträge
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Rokia Traoré – Beautiful Africa (Nonesuch, 2012)
Tracklist
Lalla
Kouma
Sikey
Ka Moun Kè
Mélancolie
N’Téri
Tuit Tuit
Beautiful Africa
SaramaIm April ist es endlich soweit: Rokia Traoré veröffentlicht ihr nunmehr 5. Album. Produziert hat es John Parish und ich erwarte nicht weniger als das Album des Jahres. Der Titeltrack ist zumindest schon mal ganz ausgezeichnet.
Guardian wrote:New music: Rokia Traoré – Beautiful AfricaRokia Traoré’s heartfelt plea on behalf of Mali, her homeland, is also a simply brilliant piece of music
Tradition among the Bambara ethnic group, into which the Malian singer Rokia Traoré was born, dictates that she should keep her music private, with the extent of her performances limited to weddings. Thankfully, Traoré, who travelled Africa and Europe relentlessly as a child with her diplomat father, felt her music needed to be heard by as many people as possible – a chance she’ll get this summer, having been the first artist named to appear at Glastonbury. In fact, while obviously respectful of tradition, she’s also keen to bend the rules, for instance using vocal harmonies in her songs, which is rare for Malian singers.
Having collaborated with everyone from Damon Albarn (Traoré was part of the Africa Express tour), Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and author Toni Morrison on her play Desdemona, Traoré moved to Bristol last year to work with producer John Parish (PJ Harvey, Sparklehorse) on what would become her fifth album, Beautiful Africa.
Premiered here is the brilliant title track, which finds Traoré lamenting the effects of war and conflict on her homeland in her native languages of French and Bambara, while the last verse is spat out angrily in English („Yet my faith does not know failure“). With a voice that can flit between beautifully soothing to uncontrollably impassioned in an instant, it’s a stirring plea for calm which ends with the line: „Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight“.
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WerbungsparchIm April ist es endlich soweit: Rokia Traoré veröffentlicht ihr nunmehr 5. Album. Produziert hat es John Parish und ich erwarte nicht weniger als das Album des Jahres. Der Titeltrack ist zumindest schon mal ganz ausgezeichnet.
In der Tat … mal sehen, ob es zu einer ordentlichen Review im RS kommt.
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I'm pretty good with the past. It's the present I can't understand.Kann schon passieren, Tchamantché wurde damals glaube ich auch rezensiert.
Tolles Artwork übrigens. Und die Gretsch Gitarre ist immer noch mit dabei.
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.ja, schönes Cover
das letzte Album gefiel mir ja auch ziemlich gut
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out of the blueThe Imposter
das letzte Album gefiel mir ja auch ziemlich gutBei mir war es gar „Album der Noughties“. Die Latte liegt auf jeden Fall sehr hoch.
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.scheint mir aber keine Gretsch zu sein
hier spielt sie eine ..
(höre grade Wanita)
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out of the blueThe Imposterscheint mir aber keine Gretsch zu sein
Stimmt wohl, würde selbst auch keine 10€ darauf verwetten. Ich hatte noch im Hinterkopf, dass das bei Tchamantché das Thema war, dass sie sich damals eine Gretsch Gitarre zugelegt hat und überhaupt erstmals eine E-Gitarre auf einem ihrer Alben zu hören war.
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.das wird sie dann wohl gewesen sein
noch eins ..
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out of the bluesparchKann schon passieren, Tchamantché wurde damals glaube ich auch rezensiert.
Wanita wurde auf jeden Fall sehr gut rezensiert. Sonst hätte ich sie mir wahrscheinlich gar nicht gekauft.
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I'm pretty good with the past. It's the present I can't understand.Am 05.04. ist es nun endlich soweit. In Deutschland erscheint das Album beim Münchner OUT|HERE Label.
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Rokia Traoré – Beautiful Africa
“I really like rock,” says Rokia Traoré about her new album Beautiful Africa, “and it was because of rock that I wanted to play music, but I didn’t want to make rock and roll in the Western tradition … I wanted something that’s rock and roll but still Malian and still me.”
When she was growing up, an older brother used to play her Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. “It wasn’t all I listened to—I discovered jazz and blues with my dad, and Malian and other African music, and French chanson, but it was rock music that made me want to learn guitar.”
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There are three guitarists on the album, John Parish, Stefano Pilia and Traoré herself, but though the record is constructed around rock riffs and sturdy bass work, it still has a distinctively West African feel, thanks to the genius of Mamah Diabaté on the n’goni, the ancient, harsh-edged African lute. It’s an instrument that Traoré has used in compositions throughout her career, and she argues, “I’ve used n’goni in classical music projects, and it goes with blues, or jazz, or rock and roll. It’s a great instrument!”
Traoré’s changes of musical direction usually start with “a sound that I imagine…a sound inside my head.” She didn’t want to imitate what other people had done “because I need to do what I imagine—that’s the reason I’m making music.” But she needed someone to help her create the sound that she imagined, and eventually decided on John Parish, the writer, guitarist, and producer who has worked with Tracy Chapman, Eels, and PJ Harvey. During the recordings “he just asked me to listen to things and make my choice.” The collaboration worked. “This is what I wanted to make. it’s even more than I imagined.”
The past year has been a quite extraordinarily productive period for Traoré. The Barbican invited her to wirte three wildly different new sets of music: the acoustic Damou (Dream), the often bluesy Donguili (Sing), and the rock- influenced Donke (Dance), in which she set out to show “three different aspects of Malian culture and my own personality.” She has toured Britain lately on the Africa Express train, collaborating with Damon Albarn as well as Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones, who joined her backing band for the London finale. And she has continued acting as well, with British and European performances in Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars’ much-praised theatrical/musical re-working of the Shakespearian story of Desdemona, for which she wrote the music.
The songs on Beautiful Africa are in the West African language of Bambara, as well as French and occasional bursts of English, and the often personal lyrics are concerned with Traoré’s thoughts on her own life, and on her tragically battered homeland. The album’s title track, built around the sturdiest rock riff on the album, is very much a love song to “battered, wounded Africa,” and reflects Traoré’s despair and fury at what has happened to her country. “The flood of my tears is in full spate, ardent is my pain,” she sings, while arguing that, “Conflict is no solution…Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight.” Other songs on the album include the thoughtful ballad “Sarama,” a praise song to Malian women, partly sung in English, and the personal “Mélancolie,” a surprisingly upbeat song about loneliness and sadness that has already become a radio hit in France. Traoré says that she was lonely as a child, partly because her father was a diplomat and constantly on the move. Another, more upbeat song, “Sikey,” is also autobiographical, looking back at the criticism she received when she first set out to become a professional musician, after all, she was not a griot, from a family of traditional musicians, but the daughter of a diplomat. And although she had no musical training, she gave up her studies in Brussels to return to Mali to create a new form of music, in which her songs would be backed by her acoustic guitar, along with n’goni and the xylophone-like balaba balafon, two instruments not normally played together in Africa.
Traoré, Parish and Stefano Pilia play guitars on the album, with Nicolai Munch- Hansen on bass, percussion from Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear), ‘human beatbox’ effects from Jason Singh, and n’goni playing and backing vocals by fellow Malian musicians Fatim Kouyaté and Bintou Soumounou, both members of the Foundation Passerelle that Traoré established in Bamako, the Malian capital, to help her fellow Malians prepare for careers in music and sustain the growth of Mali’s rich musical culture.
It is difficult to think of anyone else who can switch from ancient Malian culture to acting and then to African rock and roll. She will be touring Europe in May and June presenting her album Beautiful Africa during a run of summer festivals, including Glastonbury and Roskilde.
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.Nach den ersten Eindrücken bin ich platt. Meine Erwartungen waren ja schon hoch, werden aber noch locker übertroffen. Absolut großartig und Album des Jahres. Ich wüsste im Moment zumindest nicht, wer das noch überbieten soll.
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.Guardian: Rokia Traoré performs Ka Moun Kè
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If you stay too long, you'll finally go insane.
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