Pop music always embodies a contradiction:  it wants to be new and different, and yet it is determined to recycle the successful formulas of the past.  The magic lays in how artists balance those seemingly conflicting goals.  So it is that the artists we found most compelling in putting together Afropop Trailblazers 2006 are not inventing the wheel.  At best, they are reinventing it with sleeker sidewalls and designer hubcaps.  We focus on Souad Massi of Algeria and France and Cheikh Lo of Senegal, because they have both hit on particularly satisfying formulations of old and new.  Souad’s new album Honeysuckle (Mesk Elil) (Wrasse) captures the essence of north African, expatriate angst in Europe, and yet it is a tremendously personal, individually distinctive work.  When Souad draws on “roots rai” or Berber vocal tradition, it has a special character, because folklore has never been prominent in her music.  Souad was a rocker in Algeria, and emerged as a self-styled singer-songwriter in France.  So for her to reach back to Algerian tradition is not merely a way to spruce up her sound.  Rather it reflects a profound fascination with her estranged homeland.  The personal drama and the stylistic blend compliment each other and the total effect is authentic and moving.  Souad discusses this and more in her recent interview with Afropop. 

As for Cheikh Lo, few Afropop artists take as much time developing new work as he does.  Lo has produced just three releases in the decade since he first emerged internationally.  His newest, Lamp Fall (out in Europe on World Circuit, due out in the US on Nonesuch in 2006), was six years in gestation.  It both summarizes where he’s been and breaks bold new ground.  The essence of Lo’s appeal has always been his unique blend of Senegalese roots pop—especially percussion rich mbalax—and Afro Cuban music.  On the one hand that’s nothing new.  Senegalese artists have delved into Afro Cuban fare for decades.  But for someone of Lo’s generation to do this was unusual, and his sensibility for the blend, like Souad’s, is distinctive and personal.  At WOMEX 2005 in Newcastle, England, Lo told Afropop that Cuban music was like a “school” for him and many Senegalese musicians.  “That was my school,” he said, “I never had the chance to go to school a more how to play the drums, or the guitar, or anything like that.  Where we received our schooling was through listening, lots of listening.  And the impression from listening to Cuban music was strong, and stayed within us, like an imprint.  You can't erase it.  I think it's also a return to sources for the Cubans.  They left with that.  They left Africa, and they took something with them.  And in listening, we sense that.  Maybe we learned in school who the Cubans are, so that we would know the history.  But we could sense it right away, by listening.”

After nearly a year of recording and developing tracks for what would become Lamp Fall, Cheikh wasn’t entirely happy with the result.  He kept wanting more.  That was when his producer, Nick Gold, suggested they take the tracks to Carlinhos Brown’s studio in Bahia, Brazil.  Cheikh had long nurtured the idea of creating a cross-cultural percussion summit and as he told us, his response was immediate: YES!  Once in Brazil, Cheikh was very turned on.  “Carlinhos’s studio is there in the neighborhood.  And the young musicians he works with, they play those big drums with sticks.  I said to myself, This is almost Africa.  Effectively, this is Africa.  Because they themselves were transported from Dakar-Gore to wind up in Brazil.” 

Lo is a Baye Fall, a member of a distinctly Senegalese Sufi order, and part of his attraction to the world he found in Bahia was spiritual.  “I think Carlinhos Brown lives spirituality.  It's Yoruba religion.  In front of the studio, there was a little temple.  I saw all the symbols, snakes and so on.  But two different spiritualities can sense each other.  They sense but there is something else.  Carlinos told me, he was in the studio with the musicians and the technicians, and I was in the airplane, and the moment I arrived in the sunlight of Brazil, all the lights in the studio were cut.  They went out.  And Carlinos said, ‘Cheikh has arrived.’”  On the songs where Brazilian drumming and singing come through, that spiritual connection is palpable.  And other Brazilian sounds pervade Lo’s new music, a grinding berembau break on the anti-war cranker “Kele Magni,” and—a delightful discovery for Lo in Bahia—accordion, which is prominent on Lo’s artful remake of the Bembeya Jazz classic “Sou.”

Perhaps the most innovative song in Lamp Fall is the title song.  “Lamp Fall is my spiritual guide, and I sing about his life, more or less his biography.”  The music is rich with stylistic references.  It’s groove is complex and multifaceted, with interlocking rhythmic feels rubbing against one another.  Lo said, “We used some bluesy chords in the beginning, saxophone, a little touch of jazz in there, to add another color, another culture, along with ours, so that Europeans can feel themselves in this song “Lamp Fall” as well.  You also here a little mbalax in there.  And for me, that is very important.  We search as we travel, and we hear things every time.”  Lo’s enthusiasm for intercultural exchange is commonplace, but his music is anything but.  Nothing he does is tossed off or formulaic.  His openness, versatility, and uncompromising standards make him a genuine Afropop Trailblazer, and the featured artist in this program.

A word on some of the other, lesser known, artists featured in this program.  We include an advance track from a promising new group called Burkina Electric.  Burkina Faso has fielded some excellent folkloric acts, but has yet to produce a real Afropop hit.  This is really a New York band.  Burkina Faso singer and songwriter Mai Lingani is central here, but Austrian composer and percussionist Lukas Ligeti and the other two group members bring in completely different elements.  What is great in this music is the blend of Mai’s piquant vocals, state-of-the art electronica and programmed beats, and also tasty, African guitar, rich melodies, and widely varied grooves.  Watch for this group as they come out of production.  Sometimes artists need to leave home to break out of familiar patterns to really blaze a musical trail.  That is also part of the chemistry on the grooving Fuji Satisfaction: Soundclash in Lagos (Piranha) release, a collaboration between Nigerian fuji bandleaders Adewale Ayuba and the Afro-German hip-hop collective in Berlin, Bantu. 

Another example of finding freedom abroad comes on a Dutch-produced album called The Ritmoloog Continues (SWP Records).  This project was organized by Amsterdam drummer Michael Baird.  Baird grew up in Zambia.  He is the force behind the SWP CD releases of music from musicologist Hugh Tracey’s International Library of African Music.  Baird has also put together three excellent releases of Zambian music, including Zambia Roadside.  On Ritomoloog, Baird gets down with Ghanaian percussionist Kofi Ayivor, Senegalese percussionist Ousmane Seye, Konkie Halmeyer from Curaçao, and four European jazz musicians.  They call it a pan-African percussion summit, but it’s more of a trancey, groovy jam with lots of rich sonic textures.  For more on all these project, visit SWP Records. 

On the percussionist-jazz front, one terrific CD that didn’t make our program comes from Cuban congero Miguel “Angá” Diaz.  After years as a sideman for American jazzers Roy Hargrove and Steve Coleman, and als the Afro-Cuban All Stars, Angá steps out with a highly innovative debut, Echu Mingua (World Circuit, Nonesuch).  Jazz, roots, hip hop, and house all come together here.  An unquestionable trailblazer, Angá’s new work will feature in Afropop Worldwide’s upcoming Vignettes program on percussion styles.

There is lots and lots of hip hop going on everywhere in Africa.  Real trailblazers, like Sudan’s young Emmanuel Jal collaborating with the venerable Abdel Gadir Salim on last year’s Ceasefire (World Music Network) are the exception.  Remix projects also remain popular.  One interesting one featured on our Trailblazers program comes from South Africa.  The Mothers: Township Sessions (Mr Bongo) starts with real grass roots, a women’s choir formed in 1986 with the goal of singing songs to raise awareness of health issues affecting women and children in the townships.  The Philani Choir probably never imagined that DJs and MCs like Yossi Fine of Ex-Centric Sound System, or Nitin Sawhney, or the Kalahari Surfers would get hold of their work.  But that’s what happens on this one-of-a-kind release, featuring 10, clubby remixes of township roots.

Equally daring is a young singer who resists the pressure to go techno and borrows freely from township jazz and other roots styles while maintaining a polished, contemporary R&B sheen to her sound.  With a powerhouse voice, Simphiwe Dana ranks a roots-modern trailblazer with her fine release Zandisile (Gallo). 

Our program also samples work from the ever growing stable of Europe-based, African singer songwriters.  After hip hop, this is probably the fastest growing and most successful Afropop genre of the moment.  Whether it’s Daby Toure (of Senegal, Mauritius, and France) with his muscular, rocking power trio, or the soulful, reflective Julian Jacob (of Benin and France), who sings in a language he invented himself, or Senegal’s Julia Sarr in her collaboration with French guitarist Patrice Larose, Set Luna (no format), these singers, present themselves as individuals more than as bandleaders or representatives of tradition.  And increasingly, they are finding their places in the musical mainstream.

Finally, here are some links where you can find out more about some of the other artists featured on the Afropop Trailblazers program.  Ballaké Sissoko of Mali has an adventurous new ensemble album called Tomora (Indigo/Label Bleu), including a Sonrai takamba number.  Adama Yalomba, also of Mali, is a leader in the new, pan-ethnic generation of Malian musicians.  His newest album is Douaou (Mali Music.)  Hanine y Son Cubano of Lebanon create an intriguing blend of Arabic and Latin music, which they call Arabo-Cuban.  Their newest album is called Dix Mille Neuf Cent Huite (Elefteriades).  

One more tip:  The Time of Bells: Musical Bells of Accra, Ghana, a highly imaginative Earth Ear production (Voxlox, 2005) explores a variety of sonic spaces in Ghana, with the focus on bells.  It could be percussive bells used as time keeper in music, church bells, or the bell of a jazz saxophone.  These recordings by sound recordists Steven Feld and Nana Agazi are powerful and evocative.  This is an amazing example of “found sound,” and take our word for it, you won’t find anything like it in the annals of Afropop to date!