Mamar Kassey
Alatoumi
Modiba/World Village, 2001
Daqui, 2000
This kicking roots band from Niger pricked up ears around the world with their debut international release, Denké-Denké. The follow-up is equally impressive, with slamming arrangements, desert dry vocals, prickly, swinging drum-and-plucked-string grooves, and searing, bluesy Fulani flute breaks that will send chills down your sweaty spine. The group's masterminds, Yacouba Moumouni and Abdoulaye Alhassane, debuted Mamar Kassey in 1998 and instantly electrified Niger's sleepy pop music scene. The group plays a fusion of national ethnic music: mostly Songhai, Fulani, and Hausa. Many songs sound like a more muscular, forceful take on the music of Ali Farka Toure--dark, passionate, funky and full of echoes of American black roots music. From the flute-driven opener, "Foulbe Gari" (The Arrival of the Peuls) to the jamming closer, "Alzouma" with its pop hook, the drama rarely lets up.
"Alatoumi" (The Orphan) works with a north African take on what could be Cuban clave or New Orleans backbeat rhythm. Forget about who is influencing whom. When you hear popping electric bass, hand-held frame drums with deep tabla-like tones, and a wheedling desert fiddle getting down in this particular groove, the sense of broad African-American-Latin common ground is visceral. As deep and powerful as the best roots pop bands in Mali, Mamar Kassey also manage the high-energy drive of a Nigerian juju band, resulting in one of the most exciting new sounds to come out of Africa in the past five years.
Contributed by: Banning Eyre
Originally published in: Songlines
 |
