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Africa In America: The Artists That Keep the Music Alive!
As part of Afropop Worldwide's ongoing series on African music being made in America--including "African Music in America Talent Search" and "Mixing It Up", we present to you "Africa in America-2005" celebrating the latest crop of African musicians living in the U.S. and all musicians working on African music collaborations.
The responses from artists and bands have been overwhelming! We thank you! Submissions came from
all over the continental US, Africa, Australia and Canada. With so much material, it is without a
doubt that Afropop Worldwide will continue featuring more new artists and bands in the upcoming
season. So, keep the submission's coming! Meanwhile, music-lovers of the world, get to know the
bands presented in this exciting installment of "Africa in America-2005".
Keep supporting the artists striving to keep music alive! One ways you can do that is to register at the Afropop Music Shop and start buying digital downloads of their music. A portion of your purchase also supports Afropop Worldwide. Three of the artists featured in Africa in America-2005 now have music available in our shop: Zivanai Masango, an awesomely talented young Zimbabwean singer/songwriter, Fellyko Tshikala, a remarkable Congolese multi-instrumentalist--awesome guitar!--now living in Boston, and, also from Boston, a spectacular Afropop act specializing in, but not limited to Senegalese mbalax, Lamine Toure and Group Saloum. Support them and us by checking out their music and purchasing fair-trade digital downloads.
Artist & Band Profiles
Peter Apfelbaum & The New York Hieroglyphics: It Is Written (ACT Music)
It Is Written, Apfelbaum’s third Hieroglyphics album (his first, 1991’s Signs Of Life
which included the Grammy nominated composition “Candles And Stones,” reached #14 on
Billboard’s Contemporary Jazz Album Chart.
It Is Written includes recent examples of what Apfelbaum calls “a lifelong process of
exploring a poly-rhythmic, layered” style of composing. “I write from a drummer’s
perspective,” he explains. “Unlike with a traditional jazz group, I want to get a kind
of fullness from the rhythm section as opposed to relegating it to the background. I write
rhythms first,” he continued, “which is different than melody-based writing. If the rhythms
are good enough then, I figure, they deserve notes and I develop guitar and bass lines that
weave in and out. As far as the horns are concerned, for me their role is to react to things
the drummers are doing.” The songs “Rainbow Sign” and “Titiwa,” Apfelbaum compositions
dating back to the early 90s that have a clearly identifiable West African flavor to them,
are superb examples of this process.
(text courtesy of Act Music, photo credit: Michael Weintrob)
Abdoulaye Djoss Diabaté: Haklima (Goin' Native)
Djoss Diabaté has officially arrived with his spectacular voice and superb musical crew of
griots and jazzmen. With Haklima, Djoss delivers a delightful masterpiece of modern "Mande music" with a heavy dose of multicultural savvy and spirit. Though this powerhouse singer is no newcomer to commercial recordings and concert performances, the Haklima CD both announces and confirms his artistic arrival as a long-awaited African star.
Haklima is only Djoss's second solo album but it is, nonetheless, a landmark for next- generation griots in West African music. Key ingredients to his unique sound and style include the musical arrangements of Ivorian keyboard wiz Azouhouni Adou who packs musical surprises into every song. This album features some of New York's finest players and captures a special beauty of motion in sound that parallels the motion of Djoss's own journeys through life. From high above the Niger River, his voice soars with graceful power and elegance - a
mature and magnificently multicultural griot!
(text and photo provided courtesy of Fula Flute & Sylvian Leroux)
Toubab Krewe: Toubab Krewe (Upstream Records)
This modest quintet has been on the move since the debut release of their album Toubab Krewe.
They call their ecclectic mix of "Afro-cowboy-ninja-surf music", but that tag sells short their remarkable study and assimilation of West African music, everything from dynamic djembe drumming, to kora and kamelengoni picking, to burning West African rock guitar. Toubab Krewe's stage performances
have been warmly received by all in attendence. Toubab Krewe is one of the newest bands in the
world music scene to be watched!
The Fula Flute Ensemble
The Fula Flute Ensemble was founded in New York City in 1999 and is composed of some of the
finest African and African-oriented musicians in North America. Its jazz-style approach to
mostly traditional Mande repertoire makes an otherwise foreign idiom sound strangely familiar.
The ensemble's music focuses on the tambin, the traditional flute of the Fulani people of the
Fouta Djalon highlands of Guinea. The tambin, is a little-known instrument outside of West Africa.
There, it is revered for the profound effect it has on listeners, often bringing them to tears with its haunting sound and melodies that reach deep inside one's soul. The tambin is often
encountered as one travels through the back country... it emanates from the forest as if the song
of a spirit.
(text and photo provided courtesy of Fula Flute & Sylvian Leroux)
Zivanai Masango: Pachedu (Rhythm Tree Records)
"Zivanai is a remarkable young musician. He plays guitar, bass, trumpet, drums, and percussion,
and sings beautifully. He understands the subtle intricacies of Zimbabwean traditional music, but
is also at home in a variety of international music styles. Zivanai’s variety of talents earned
him a place in Thomas Mapfumo and The Blacks Unlimited, the most important modern band in Zimbabwe, and one of the great African bands of the past century. But that was only a waystation for Zivanai.
Since arriving in New York, he has moved in many directions, from solo artist to guitarist in Chris Berry’s exceptional pop band, Panjea. Finally, a personal note. I play in a band of mostly Americans who play Shona traditional music from Zimbabwe. We have been privileged to work with Zivanai on some gigs, and he is a great guy to know for us, because if just about any one of our musicians can’t make a gig, he can fill in for them. This guy is going places!
Listen to "Chikende" and purchase fair trade digital downloads or Zivanai's music from the Afropop Shop!
(text courtesy of Banning Eyre, January 2005)
Markus James: Calabash Blues (Firenze Records)
Markus James, the travelling songwriter, originally of Virginia and currently residing in the San
Francisco Bay Region, has traveled to Mali for years, recording American Blues-influenced songs with
legendary West African musicians such as Hamma Sankare, Ali Farka Toure’s famous calabash player.
A toubab is a white man in the language of the Songhai of northern Mali. When James was in Timbuktu
writing and recording new songs with traditional Malian musicians, a musical exchange and friendship
took root and blossomed, resulting in a documentary film and a subsequent CD/DVD release Timbuktoubab.
James remembers getting ready for his first concert in Timbuktu with his Malian partners: “…the whole
thing started to sound like an old blues band playing in a club, and with Hassi wailing on his njarka
through an overdriven amp, it even started to tend towards the psychedelic, which I loved. His Njarka
started to remind me of a blues harp played through an amp…It's just different from the quiet atmosphere
of recording with just a couple of acoustic instruments in a house. These first songs are the sound of
the houses we recorded them in, except "sun is risin", which Hamma, Hassi and I recorded outside under a nice tree, because they said that would be better for the Jimbala rhythm (because the Jinn love natural
beauty and are drawn to the river, trees, etc)."
(text courtesy of Danya Cheskis-Gold)
Fellyko and Sound 7: Paysan (Raskay)
 Fellyko Tshikala was born in Mbuji Mayi, deep in the Congolese interior. His obvious musical talent
soon opened a path to the capital, Kinshasa, during the 1980s heyday of the music the world knows as rumba, soukous, kwassa-kwassa and other names-in a nutshell, the most powerful and influential dance pop music created in modern Africa. Fellyko absorbed everything, playing guitar, bass, drums, also singing and composing. He made his way in the scene in one of Congolese music's most demanding roles, the bass that drives the music with military precision and the soul of indigenous hand drum music, often identified as the traditional source of the Congolese bass style.
Catch a listen to "Paysan" and purchase fair trade downloads of Fellyko's music from the Afropop Shop.
Contact Felly: fellyko@hotmail.com
(text courtesy of Banning Eyre)
Micheal Spiro and Michael Williams: BataMbira (BataMbira Productions)
In the spirit of the acclaimed album BataKetu, this is the latest in a series of albums fusing Afro-Cuban
folkloric music with other folkloric traditions. In this case, it is the beautiful melodies of the mbira,
a thumb piano whose traditional usage stretches back hundreds of years to the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
Spiro is joined here by mbira virtuoso Michael Williams, as well as a bevy of extremely talented musicians:
Jesus Diaz on vocals and timbal, Sonyalsis Feldman on vocals, Sylvain Leroux on Fula flute, Munose on the Bansuri flute, and a host of others adding background vocals.
Get a copy of BataMbira from CD Baby. 
(text courtesy of Michael Spiro)
Musekiwa Chingodza, Beauler Dyoko, and Paul Prince: Nyamamusango
Musekiwa Chingodza was born into a family of great mbira players in Mwangara Village, Murewa, in 1970.
He began playing mbira at age five, and says about his playing, “No one taught me to play mbira. Rather, I
learned by listening to other magwenyambira as they were playing. When I play mbira, I remember these old men I used to play with as a youngster at ceremonies, including my grandfather, Sekuru Chingodza. Mbira music is both medicine and food, as it satisfies and heals both the living and the ancestors.” Visit PaulPrince.com.
Learn more about Musekiwa Chingodza through Dandemutande: Zimbabwean Music Worldwide.
Silita: Ziva Tako (Lusafrica)
A girl and two boys. A singer and backing vocals soaring free over the jubilant gallop of percussion and
timbila, the wooden xylophone of the chopi people. The trio have not forgotten the teachings of their elders:
to strike out into the future, you must first look to the past. They care little for passada (local zouk) and
marrenbenta (the country's seminal musical style). So what is their aim? Purely and simply to uphold and promote the traditional music of Mozambique.
The keystone - the swinging, bouncing backbone of Silita's music - is first and foremost timbila, the
characteristic instrument and music of the chopi people, an ethnic group from the south coast of Mozambique to the north of Maputo.
In December 1999, Simão, Lourindo and Tania - all three members of the song and dance group at the Community Arts Centre - felt they were ready for the great challenge and formed Silita. Resolutely rejecting commercial styles and deaf to the advice of friends who warned of impending disaster if they insisted on performing traditional music, they forged themselves a path with determination and energy.
(text courtesy of Lusafrica)
Micheal Veal & Aqua Ife: The Afro-Kirlian Eclipse
Bassist/composer Michael Veal has played as a guest artist with the late Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela
Anikulapo-Kuti as well as master set drummer Tony Allen, Afrobeat's "co-pilot." On The Afro-Kirlian Eclipse,
he has forged a progressive vision of Afro-influenced jazz, reflecting the additional influences of Sun Ra,
funk and electronica. The disc's title is an allusion to the famous "Kirlian camera," claimed to be capable
of photographing the electrical aura emitted by the human body. But the title is also a reference to Duke
Ellington's 1971 suite, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. As implied by these references, Veal's music is jazzy and funky, with an electric African aura.
The Afro-Kirlian Eclipse (2005) is Veal's first full length release, and features him at the helm of
Aqua Ife - a 15-piece band of many talented musicians, including guitarists Vernon Reid (Living Colour),
keyboardist Steve Lantner (Mat and Joe Manieri), saxophonists Sam Newsome (Terence Blanchard, Global Unity), Alex Harding (Oliver Lake Big Band), Ron Blake (Me'shell Ndegeocello, Christian McBride) and Colin Stetson (Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Tom Waits), drummer Trevor Holder (Roy Ayers, Brian Jackson, Burnt Sugar), and master percussionists Felix Sanabria and Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng. The band performs several of Veal's original compositions as well as his Afro-funk arrangements of John Coltrane's epochal "Sun Ship" and Wayne Shorter's "Super Nova." Writing in The Beat magazine (summer 2005), Dave Hucker described The Afro-Kirlian Eclipse as "A creative Afro-jazz exploration - a powerful sonic explosion, deeply infused with a post-modernist Sun Ra meets Fela style. Very nice indeed!"
Contact: michael.veal@yale.edu
(bio courtesy of Michael Veal. Photo courtesy of Laura Williams)
Lamine Touré and Group Saloum (Notable Dot Com/Nomadic Wax)
 Lamine Touré is widely recognized as one of Senegal’s leading percussionists. Born into a griot family of sabar drummers, Lamine Touré has been drumming since the age of four, performing with his family troupe at weddings, baptisms, and dance events.
Since 1997, he has enjoyed a fruitful career with the successful Senegalese mbalax band NDER et le Setsima Group, performing at Bercy (Paris), the Festival International de Jazz (Montréal), Paradise Rock Club (Boston) and Central Park Summerstage (New York). In 2001, he settled in the United States to pursue his solo career. In addition to leading Group Saloum, Touré has been serving as artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and teaches sabar drum and dance classes in the Boston area.
(text courtesy of Nomadic Wax)
Once again, you can purchase digital downloads of music by Group Saloum from the Afropop Shop.
Alpha YaYa Diallo: Djama (Jericho Beach Music)
Guitarist and singer Alpha Yaya Diallo, from Guinea in West Africa, is one of the hottest acts on the current
world music scene. Now based in Vancouver, Canada, he's earned a matchless reputation internationally for the excellence of his musicianship and the excitement of his live shows - whether performing solo or with his band Bafing.
Diallo is a uniquely multi-talented artist. His dexterous acoustic and electric guitar-playing, with its fluid melodic lines and compelling grooves, places him in the front ranks of African axemen. In addition he is a skilled and experienced performer on a variety of percussion instruments, and on the balafon (traditional wooden xylphone). To complete the abundance of riches Diallo writes his own compositions, and sings with a supple and beautifully modulated voice.
(text and photo courtesy of Alpha Diallo.com)
Contributed by: Louise Chang, Danya Cheskis-Gold, D. Misha Turner, Banning Eyre
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