AfroCubism - AfroCubism
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CD Details
Artist: AfroCubismEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2010-11-02
Music Label: Nonesuch
Soundtracks:
- Mali Cuba
- Al Vaivén De Mi Carreta [The Swaying of My Cart]
- Karamo [The Hunter]
- Djelimady Rumba
- La Culebra [The Snake]
- Jarabi [Passion]
- Eliades Tumbao 27
- Dakan
- Nima Diyala [I Beg You My Sweetheart]
- A La Luna Yo Me Voy [I'm Going to the Moon]
- Mariama
- Para Los Pinares Se Va Montoro [Montoro's Going to Los Pinares]
- Benséma [Change]
- Guantanamera [Woman From Guantánamo]
Music reviews of AfroCubism
Music Review: Afrocubism at Town Hall Nov 9, 2010
Rating: 5 Stars
When the world discovered Buena Vista Social Club, very few folks realized it was a fairly happy circumstance occasioned by passport snafus. (Few folks realized years later the US government chased down organizer Ry Cooder for financial penalties). The band that was supposed to gather in Havana over a dozen years ago was finally able to record a fine new album and engage in a brief world tour. Afrocubism is a fine blending of Cuban and Malian musicians, and their performance in NYC left folks seeking more.
Song after song featured Latin trumpets over rippling Malian rhythms, with a sparkling electric Gibson. The ostensible leaders of the group were Eliades Ochoa (guitar and voice) and Toumani Diabate (kora). They were joined by ten other master musicians, who collectively laid down 90 minutes of splendid music. Most of the songs were from the eponymous album which was released exactly a week earlier. The set opener "Mali Cuba" set the stage, and the remainder of the setlist alternated between the two hemispheres, but the underlying rhythms were consistently addictive. Junior Terry's bass and the percussion of Jorge Maturell laid a solid foundation for the musical textures explored by the group.
About halfway through the set many of the bandmembers left the stage, leaving the trio of Ochoa and the cousins Kassemady and Lassana Diabate. They assayed the Cuban chestnut "Guantanamera" which almost went off the rails until an audience sing along got it back on track.
I had several thoughts during the concert. If David Byrne, Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel can meld world music, why not two 3rd world countries directly? As a kid my ethnocentrism was challenged when I discovered that Finland and Malaysisa could have diplomatic relations, I had thought all international relations went through the USA. And so it seemed for years that all blends of world music seemed to require an Anglo-Saxon nexus. Afrocubism proves the exception.
My second thought was the hidden benefit of technology. Undoubtedly the internet played a huge role in linking the evening's musicians...how would they have found each other even a decade ago?
Hemingway never saw this kind of activity sipping his mojitos in old Havana.
In a sad testament to lingering passport issues, one Malian (lute/ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate) was denied entry for the US leg of the tour. He was the same musician who was similarly unable to join the musicians in Havana all those years ago.
Description of AfroCubism
The great world music album that-never-was has finally been realized. The project that became the Buena Vista Social Club has borne its own extraordinary fruit.In 1996, a group of Mali's finest musicians were due to fly into Havana for a speculative collaboration with some of Cuba's most brilliant singers and instrumentalists. For reasons that have never been made clear, the Malians never arrived. A very different album was recorded: 'The Buena Vista Social Club'. The rest, as they say, is multi-million selling history.
But what about that original album? What riches might have been revealed in the interaction of virtuosi from one of Africa's most musically rich territories, and from Cuba whose music has origins in Africa, and has been hugely influential on the mother continent?
Now we have the opportunity to find out. World Circuit Records' Nick Gold, the man behind the 1996 venture, finally brought the original invitees together with a stellar line-up of additional talent at a series of inspirational sessions and the great lost Afro-Cuban album will be released fourteen years after originally planned.
Fronting the Cuban team is the cowboy-hatted singer and guitarist Eliades Ochoa, singer of the great Buena Vista theme 'Chan Chan.' The two original Malian invitees are multi award-winning ngoni lute master Bassekou Kouyate and the extraordinary Rail Band guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, both universally agreed to be among the world,s great instrumentalists. Joining them are Eliades' Grupo Patria, amongst Cuba's longest running and most revered bands, the mercurial kora genius Toumani Diabaté, legendary Malian griot singer Kasse Mady Diabaté and the innovatory balafon player Lassana Diabaté.
'It was as though the musicians had been holding back their ideas and energy for that moment,' says Gold, who produced the album, with the great Buena Vista engineer Jerry Boys at his side. 'After we'd waited so long, it all came together remarkably easily and spontaneously. The group had never played together before but the music just poured out and it continued to flow over the next few days.' Seventeen songs were recorded in five days, with all the musicians playing together 'live' in one large room. A second session was convened some months later and produced a further nine songs.
The title 'AfroCubism' is advised. This is an album that throws the elements of Cuban and African music in the air and lets them fall in entrancing new patterns.
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