Photos and text by Banning Eyre

For dedicated fans of today's African music, it's hard to imagine a festival anywhere that tops Musiques Métisses, an annual spring event in Angoulême, France for over two decades now. The festival's artistic director, Christian Mousset, began the event as a jazz and blues festival in 1976, but in the early 1980s, it began trending towards African music, and has never looked back. The stages of this festival have seen the first performances outside Africa for an impressive list of legendary artists that includes Salif Keita, Cesaria Evora, Bembeya Jazz, the Super Rail Band, Jaojoby, Rokia Traoré, as well as the first appearances in France by the Mahotella Queens, Johnny Clegg, and Thomas Mapfumo.

France's history in Africa helps to explain the government's enthusiastic embrace of Mousset's Afrocentric programming over the years, but equally impressive is the response of the people of Angoulême, a small city in the southwest, on the road to Bordeaux and Cognac. The locals may not have the worldly outlook and style of their Parisian compatriots to the north, but after the education Mousset has brought them year after year, they sure know and love their African music!

Musiques Métisses mostly takes place on a small, river-bound island right in town. Angoulême's red-roofed, steeple-topped summit rises above the site, and kayakers rehearse their moves on a fast rivulet that shoots along one side of the island. The combined effect makes for an easy flow of the ordinary into the exotic. There are four days of music on three stages. The smaller Mandingue and Filaos stages are free and open to the public, and the larger Grand Chapiteau, just across that fast rivulet, offers three or four consecutive acts each night for a modest cover charge. The lighting and sound on all these stages is splendid, particularly the lighting which is elaborate and artful--downright dazzling on the Grand Chapiteau stage.

The festival's pacing is easy enough that you can catch some of pretty much every act if you choose. Given the strength of the lineup, this is a big plus. Most of the acts also play two or even three times during the festival so you don't have to drive yourself mad running from act to act. And of course, there's reasonably priced international cuisine, and beer and wine flow freely from the opening of the gates just after noon until well past the end of the music, sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 AM.

The action began on Friday May 17 in the evening. Nyamakala, a traditional music and dance group from Guinea kicked things off, followed by Abdel Gadir Salim & Khartoum All Stars. This sublimely beautiful urban Nubian wedding music is just the sort of thing that makes the ticket to France worth an American Afropop fan's while. Even before September 11, we stood little chance of hearing this glorious sound on any U.S. concert stage. There is nothing trendy or hip about Salim and his group, just the quirky serenity of Nubian village music gone urban, the rhythms of camels, cows and horses rendered on oud, violins, flute, saxophone, electric guitar, bass, percussion and reedy voices, notably Salim's own gentle tenor voice.

The main stage (Grand Chapiteau) action kicked off with one-of-a-kind guitarist/singer/songwriter Boubacar Traoré of Mali. Kar Kar gave his usual soulful performance backed only by a calabash player. Danyel Waro, a singer from Isle Réunion, followed with a rousing set of rootsy Indian Ocean island lore. Straight from Lagos, King Sunny Adé and his incomparable African Beats pounded the evening home with a long set of juju music absolutely up to his high standard, except for the unexplained absence of his pedal steel guitarist.

Meanwhile, on the free Mandingue stage, France's inventive world music outfit Lo'Jo played to an appreciative and familiar crowd. Over the course of the festival the Filao stage featured two sets each from Steve Riley and C.J. Chenier of Louisianna. If the French connection that joins Sudan, Reunion, Mali, and Louisianna seems a reach to you, it sure didn't to the people of Angoulême who greeted Cajun music and zydeco with exactly the same enthusiasm they put out for all manner of African pop.

While Adé closed out the night on the big stage, one of the real treats of this year's festival went down at the Mandingue stage. After 14 years without an album or an international tour, Guinea's majestic Bembeya Jazz (founded 1961!) is back. Mousset brought them to the festival and kept them there to rehearse and record their first album since 1988. Twelve strong, and still graced with four original members, including guitarist Sekou "Bembeya" Diabaté--a..k.a. "Diamond Fingers"--this band left no doubt that they are in superb shape and ready to ride again. With four guitars, three horns and three singers, Bembeya delivers the authentic African big band experience, shot through with clever arranging, and strong flavors of Manding tradition, Afro-Cuban rhythm, and classic R&B. Stay tuned for much more on the Bembeya Jazz revival on Afropop Worldwide and www.afropop.org.

For those unable to tear themselves away from Adé's juju beat, Bembeya Jazz kicked off the festivities early on Saturday afternoon. Abdel Gadir Salim and C.J. Chenier were also back in action, and making his first appearance of the festival, Madagascar guitarist D'Gary played a sterling mid-afternoon set packed with gorgeous melodies and knotty finger-picking rhythms. D'Gary's three-piece group is filled out by a svelte, silver-throated young female singer, and a percussionist who also sings. D'Gary's own vocals can't match his guitar wizardry, but they do have a definite charm, and he writes excellent vocal melodies, which when rendered in this group's flawless three-part-harmonies lend a big measure of warmth and heart to some of the most technical roots guitar playing to be found anywhere.

From the remote northern Malian town of Kidal, the Tuareg ensemble Tinariwen also proved a remarkable discovery. None of the group's three guitarists can equal Ali Farka Touré's chops, but weaving their way through hypnotic strains of voice and percussion, they help to cast a lasting spell. The very concept of a modern Tuareg band is quite young, and these musicians have been in on it since the start. Their stage show contains nothing artificial or theatrical. Indeed, it might benefit from a little embellishment, but the music is powerfully haunting. I lingered to have an interview with this group and so missed what I am told was another roots discovery, Salem Tradition from Réunion.

Saturday night's main stage action got off to a smooth start with a tame but beautiful set from Lokua Kanza. Originally from Congo, Kanza sings like an angel, and he's developed an original ballad style that is certainly impressive but so polished as to bore fans of rootsier African pop as quick as you can say, "Sing after me." If ever proof was needed that you don't necessarily have to lose your roots to polish your act, that proof was provided by the act that followed Kanza: Habib Koite of Mali.

International audiences are well acquainted with Koite's guitar-driven, pan-Malian pop by now, as he's toured relentlessly in recent years. But for all the times I've caught the act, I've never seen anything like this. Koite was, quite simply, fire. The thousands assembled in that tent knew him well, and gave him a rock-star welcome, which he honored with a staggering performance. Koite's band Bamada has never sounded better, and the pacing and energy of the show was absolutely masterful.

One of many high points came when Abdallah, a singer and guitarist from the Tuareg group Tinariwen, along with Tinariwen's two female singers, came on stage to dance the takamba during the song "Fatma." This is a song Koite wrote in the style of northern Songhai people, close neighbors of the Tuareg, though way outside Koite's ancestral turf. The song was a huge hit with Malians from the start, but you could tell that Koite was touched that these Tuareg musicians thought enough of it to join him on stage.

This may have been the most thrilling performance of the entire festival for me, all the more so as I went in thinking I'd seen all Koite and his band had to offer. Never make that assumption at Musique Métisses. The people of Angoulême clearly have a special effect on some of these musicians.

Lo'Jo and Steve Riley delivered long, well-received sets on the free stages, and in the closing hours of the night, Frédéric Galliano offered a little experimental fare on the Mandingue stage. Billed as Fred Galliano and the African Divas, the music was trancey club grooves with Galliano spinning vinyl, while percussionists and a kora player filled in. Two female singers from West Africa, one singing in a griot mode and the other drawing on the bluesy Wassoulou tradition, topped the act. I came in straight from Habib Koite's set and found the effect pretty flat. As many doubts as I have about Galliano's project in recordings, it seems even less effective in concert, especially side by side with so many powerful, organic acts.

Meanwhile, back on the main stage, the task of following Koite's juggernaut directly fell to France's Seargent Garcia. He did well. This band has the ability to blur the lines between ska and salsa, and plunge from sizzling Afro-Cuban music into deep, throbbing reggae without a pause. Their brisk, fast-paced set demonstrated that they can do this on stage as well as in the studio, and that alone was impressive. Having been lulled by Kanza, and electrified by Koite, the crowd was pretty much in ecstasy anyway, and quite happy to dance the night out to any groove Garcia and his band cared to crank out--as long as it cranked. And it did.

Sunday morning began with a surprise. When Isnebo et Faadah Kawtal of Cameroon failed to turn up due to a visa snag, an all female traditional group from Guinea, Soumow, took their place and got the day off to a dazzling start. The sight of fabulously dressed women laying into balafons, let alone a three-stringed bolon harp, as well as dancing, drumming and singing glorious jeliya (griot praise), was enough to awaken spirits already weary from two days of very intense musical uplift.

The afternoon saw more Louisiana boogie from C.J. Chenier and Steve Riley and blistering guitar work from D'Gary, as well as the first of three sets from Congolese rumba legend Wendo Kolosoy. Wendo's arrival from Kinshasa had been delayed, denying him his planned slot on the main stage on Friday night. But once on the scene, he and his classy 9-piece band Victoria Bakolo Miziki proved an instant sentimental hit with the festival goers, who wasted no time dusting off their rumba moves. More on Wendo later.

A Cuban and Mexican group called Danzonera de Felipe Urban also provided an intriguing glimpse into the past. This group's repertoire harkens back to the elegant, late 19th century dance music of Cuba, danzon. The short bit of the act I caught also featured some outrageously theatrical couples dancing, which went down very well with the locals, although no one dared imitate it.

The Grand Chapiteau lineup for Day 3 was heavy on Cape Verde, starting out with young guitarist singer Teofilo Cantre, and ending with Cesaria Evora, backed by a lush, 11-piece band. In between, an eclectic Corsican band called Zamballarana held court. For my part, I missed most of this--except for Cesaria--because I was unexpectedly smitten by two of the acts on the free stages.

First came Hasna El Becharia, a gnawa singer from Algeria, now living in France and promoting her debut international recording, Djazair Johara (Label Bleu/Indigo). I learned in an interview that El Becharia did not record and perform in theatres during her long career in Algeria. Rather, she played private events and healing ceremonies, working in the ancient tradition of the gnawa, where music is used literally as medicine. Another thing El Becharia is doing now that she didn't do back home is playing the deep-toned traditional lute, the guimbri, which is traditionally the purview of men only.

In her evening set at the Mandingue stage, El Becharia and her four accompanists cast a spell as deep as the one the Tuaregs had spun the day before. Whether she played a classical guitar in the tuning and manner of an oud, or the sacred guimbri, she demonstrated impressive musicality and laid down the backbone of her ensemble's sound. Her voice was craggy and powerful. The other musicians backed her with lightly rolling percussion and reedy vocal harmonies. Staying to interview El Becharia meant missing the Corsicans as well as Isle Réunion singer Nathalie Natiembe, who got enthusiastic reviews from trusted colleagues. But this gnawa diva was one of the revelations of the festival for me, and it was worth it!

Another painful choice came near the end of the night when I broke away from Cesaria Evora's rich, graceful performance to catch a little of a band I knew only on record, the Gangbe Brass Band of Benin. This band begs questions like, "What would happen if Fela Kuti's old horn section merged with the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and set about interpreting traditional songs from the forested south of Benin?" The horns come from the colonial legacy of military brass bands, "fanfares," as they call them. But the music is deep roots, much of it from same well as Yoruba religious chants and vodou ritual, material well represented in the syncretic religious music of places like Haiti, Cuba, and Brazil. As interesting as all that is, this band's true force turns out to be its stage show, not only the costumes and choreography but the full-grin enthusiasm and passion with which they sing, drum, dance, cavort, and of course, play those brass horns: trumpets, saxophones, trombones, and the indispensable tuba bass.

Some of the best music renders polyrhythmic African grooves and textures as brass band music, and the effect can be startlingly beautiful. One colleague noted that Gangbe has no technically brilliant soloists, as you'd expect to find in a jazz band. This didn't bother me, but for the right soloist, Gangbe presents a golden opportunity to sit in. In the band's second Musiques Métisses set early on Monday, Paris-based Cameroonean jazz saxophonist Jean-Jacques Elangue took that opportunity, and the result was the highlight of the set. Otherwise, before a small, groggy crowd with bright sunlight all around, Gangbe couldn't quite reproduce the heat and intensity of their Sunday night performance. Still, they were exceptional. As gorgeous as Cesaria Evora sounded with her near orchestral backing, I found it hard to change gears after Gangbe's vodou horns. The Gangbe Brass Band is set to do their first U.S. tour in the fall of 2002. New Orleans had better be on the itinerary!

After three days of exceptional performances, most festival goers would have been pleased to coast on Day 4. And indeed, there were a number of repeat performances on Monday. But there were also surprises. Congolese guitar icon Papa Noel performed a riveting set with the Cuban group Asere, making the Cuba-Congo connection in a decidedly guitar-intensive way. Despite evident poor health, Papa Noel played wonderfully, and although he declined to do interviews, he insisted on staying on the scene to see Wendo Kolosoy perform.

Wendo had his first hit in 1948, and the mere symbolism of his still being on the stage obviously meant a lot to Papa Noel. But it had probably been decades since he'd actually seen Wendo perform, and he seemed unprepared for the beauty and impact of the music. As Wendo and his band weaved through old and new rumbas, I could see tears rolling down Noel's face. At one point, he made the unusual move of walking onto the stage, stopping the song the band had just struck up, and taking the microphone to explain to the audience that Wendo was the man who showed the way for all the Congolese music that followed. Wendo responded with a volley of trademark yodeling, and the band struck up again, as dancing Congolese and French couples twirled through the crowd.

During the final night of action, I missed performances by two young female singers, Coco Mbassi of Cameroon and Souad Massi of Algeria. But I did get my first taste of a live show by Mali's Amadou and Mariam, once called "the blind couple of Mali." The couple met at an association for the blind, decided to make music together, and then got married. It's a sweet story, but their music, based in the bluesy folklore of the Bambara people, has a decidedly tough edge. Amadou did not object when I called it "Malian rock 'n' roll." He's got a powerful voice and a ripping guitar style, and their largely French backing band really kicks out the jams. The result won't please purists, but it also avoids the pitfall of being smoothed out into genteel international pop. This act could stand up to any urban blues band on the scene.

The final set of the festival came from Ismaël Lo, who hasn't appeared in the United States for nearly seven years. Lo has always been the least rootsy of Senegal's modern stars, drawing as much from UK folk and American soul as from any traditional African sources. But he's got a sensational voice and a great band, quite capable of churning out hard-nosed mbalax when the occasion calls for it. On one of his anthem-like ballads, "Africa," Lo went into Pete Seeger mode leading a multitudinous group sing. The set wasn't especially visceral or challenging, but it felt right for a wrap-up to an amazing four days of music.

Tune into Afropop Worldwide and watch this site for interviews, features, live recordings and more photos from our research at the Musiques Métisses festival, 2002.