Established in London in 1982 and in New York seven years later, Sterns African Record Centre is recognized internationally as, in the words of The New York Times, "one of the world's finest disseminators of African music." Sterns was the company that brought Salif Keita, Papa Wemba, Boubacar Traoré, Orchestra Baobab, Oumou Sangaré, Ismaël Lô and Sam Mangwana to international attention. Africando and Kékélé got their start with Sterns and continue to record for the Sterns Africa label, as do young artists such as Mayra Andrade, Ba Cissoko and Dawda Jobarteh. The Sterns Brasil label features contemporary Brazilian acts such as DJ Dolores and Nação Zumbi.
In recent years, Sterns ARC has undertaken an ambitious project to honor the most important artists of modern African music with illustrated, annotated 2CD retrospectives. Among the honorees thus far: Youssou N'Dour's Étoile de Dakar, Franco & Le TPOK Jazz, The Rail Band, Bembeya Jazz and Tabu Ley Rochereau. Chris May of All About Jazz had this to say about the series: "From its inception, everything about Sterns' compilation program has been pitch-perfect. Curated by enthusiasts with deep knowledge of their subjects ... Sterns' compilations are exemplary. The care with which they are put together respects artists and listeners."
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STCD 1130CD
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There is a quiet confidence to I Met Her By The River, Dawda Jobarteh's third album for Sterns Africa. While the kora master's technique is prodigious, it's always subservient to the song. And although the songs contain beautiful moments of contemplation, they are never facile or saccharine. Their beauty and intricacy connote no loss of power or slackening of intent. The excellent support of his longtime friends and sidemen notwithstanding, this new album is definitely the work of a singular artist. Jobarteh's repertoire choices reflect both his birth and history in Gambia and his life and home in Denmark. In songs such as "Karang Folo" and "Sidi Yella", you hear the musician who is the grandson of the world-renowned kora player Alhaji Bai Konté; the youngest son of Amadou Bansang Jobarteh, the favorite musician of Gambia's first president; and the nephew of Dembo Konté and Malamini Jobarteh, the kora duo that Sterns first recorded in 1985. Elsewhere you hear other traditions and styles that Dawda has effortlessly absorbed into his own. "Jeg Gik Mig U Den Sommerdag" (which translates from Danish as "I Went Out On A Summer's Day") has a Scandinavian melody that dates back at least to the 17th century and words set in the 19th century, and has since become a perennial summertime favorite in Denmark. But Dawda Jobarteh has more than two sides to him. A world traveler, he appreciates the multifarious cultural influences beyond his personal West African-Northern European axis, and so it shouldn't be surprising, really, that he plays Mongo Santamaria's jazz classic "Afro Blue" on an electrified kora, or that he delivers an exquisite rendition of Adele's multi-million-selling pop hit, "Hello". And then of course there are his own highly original songs, such as the album's title track, a wistful kora solo, or "Begging Boys", a clear-eyed, heartfelt piece of social commentary. Dawda Jobarteh is, after all, a 21st-century citizen of the world -- as everyone is. I Met Her By The River, the third album by the Gambian composer, has been described as "absolutely beautiful", "a gorgeous synthesis of the old and the new", and "a joyful noise from a man right at home in very different musical and geographical places."
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STCD 3019-20CD
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2004 release. In the 20 years that these two discs span, 1977-1997, Papa Wemba rose from a cult following in Zaire (Congo) to global stardom. Mwana Molokai is a collection of Wemba's most outstanding recordings, featuring tracks that were never previously available on CD or outside Africa, including several rare singles. In addition to duets with Pépé Kallé, Wendo Kolosoy, and Koffi Olomidé, the album showcases Wemba's celebrated band Viva La Musica. With Papa Wemba's death in 2016 at the age of 66 after collapsing on stage during a concert in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, this compilation is the best retrospective of the trendsetting soukous songwriter, singer, and bandleader.
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STCD 1104CD
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2007 release. Jean Bialu Makiese -- or Madilu System, as the great Congolese bandleader Franco dubbed him -- possessed the high wistful voice featured in so many T.P.O.K. Jazz records of the 1980s, including Franco's biggest hit, "Mario". After Franco's death in 1989, Madilu System began a successful solo career. In addition to his own projects, he recorded duets with soukous stars such as Papa Wemba and Mbilia Bel, and sang leads as a guest on albums by Kékélé and Africando. Although his voice was no longer so high, Madilu was singing better than ever in the spring of 2007 when he recorded La Bonne Humeur, which was also graced by the guitars of Syran Mbenza, Dally Kimoko, and Papa Noel, and the harmony voices of Nyboma Mwan'dido and Wuta Mayi. Sterns Africa was preparing the album's release when Madilu died from diabetic shock in a Kinshasa hospital in August of that year. La Bonne Humeur was posthumously hailed by The Beat magazine as the late singer's best album and proof that soukous was alive and well in the 21st century.
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STCD 1079CD
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1997 release. There's more to being a jelimuso (hereditary poet and musician of the Mande people of West Africa) than recounting history and singing praises. If she's dignified and bold enough, she speaks truth to power and denounces customs that perpetuate superstition and injustice. Aminata Kamisoko is that kind of jelimuso. The title song of her album Malamine decries the antiquated belief that a barren woman is cursed and a disgrace to her family and husband, and in its verses she reveals that she is the infertile but proud mother of her adopted children. Her first child, Lamine Soumano, is the kora player and guitarist in this album. No wonder she's proud.
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STCD 1101CD
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2017 repress. Originally released in 2006. Kékélé's third album Kinavana is a celebration of the musical bloodlines that have run between Cuba and Congo for hundreds of years. As the title hints, it's the spirited and sensuous sound of both Kinshasa and Havana. Along with Kékélé's original members, Kinavana features the grand old master-guitarist Papa Noel, the globetrotting saxophonist Manu Dibango, superstar chanteuse Mbilia Bel, and arranger Nelson Hernandez, best known for his work with salsa diva Celia Cruz. "Kinavana is not just the best African album I've heard in years; it's superior to most of the music I've heard lately, from any place." --All About Jazz "Kékélé make the most exquisite music." --The Independent "Unadulterated joy." --London Metro
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STCD 3003CD
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Originally released in 1993. Bamba is a classic. Recorded in Dakar and released on a pair of cassettes in 1980 and 1981 in Senegal only, these tracks had become legendary well before Sterns Africa discovered the original tapes and reissued them on one CD in 1993. This set marks an early peak in the glorious history of Orchestra Baobab: the time when the band boasted five singers, including the magnificent Thione Seck (who soon embarked on a brilliant solo career) and the plaintive-voiced Medoune Dialo (who later went on to form Africando), and the time when guitarist Barthélémy Attisso was honing Carlos Santana's influence into a dazzling, multihued African psychedelia. "Bamba is simply a great album, and the perfect place for rock-oriented listeners to enter the realm of West African pop music." --AllMusic
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STCD 1128CD
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While it's true that Dawda Jobarteh was born into an illustrious Gambian family of griots, hereditary court musicians and especially kora players (his father was Amadou Bansang Jobarteh, his uncles were Dembo Konté and Malamini Jobarteh, and his grandfather was the great Alhaji Bai Konté), it doesn't necessarily follow that he upholds family tradition. Griots learn their craft and repertoire over many years of study with their elders, starting in childhood, but Dawda was an adult when he picked up a kora for the first time, and by then he was far from Africa, his elders, and their tradition. Living in Copenhagen, he was a drummer in jazz and rock bands. But the sound of the kora, even in his untrained hands, tugged his ear and stirred deep memories and feelings. He taught himself to play the 21-string harp, figuring out the classics he remembered from his youth and composing new music in untraditional styles. He recorded his debut album, Northern Light Gambian Night, for Sterns Africa in 2011 (STCD 1112CD). All About Jazz praised its "gorgeous synthesis of the old and the new"; Songlines described it as "an album of delicacy and beauty" and awarded it five stars; and ABC Radio called it "a joyful noise from a man right at home in very different musical and geographic places." In the five years since then, Jobarteh has traveled widely, performing in Europe and Asia, returning to Gambia and touring other African nations, but Denmark, where he lives with his wife and three children, has been and will remain his base. And "right at home in very different musical and geographic places" still characterizes him and his art. "Winter Trees Stand Sleeping", the kora solo that begins his new album and gently evokes piano nocturnes by Scandinavian composers like Edvard Grieg, and compare it with "Dalua", a piece firmly rooted in Gambian griot jaliya. "Jamming in the Fifth Dimension" is an unbridled improvisational duet between Jobarteh, playing an electric kora, and percussionist Salieu Dibba, and "Transition" is a John Coltrane tune. Dawda's expansive worldview is reflected in his words as well as in his music. He wrote "Bright Sky Over Monrovia" for a play about Liberian blood diamonds. "Efe" decries the way arbitrary borders and immigration policies divide families. When he sings about his own family, his perspective is rounded and nuanced, as in "Mba Sina", which is both critical of polygamy and appreciative of his mother's co-wife. Dawda Jobarteh honors his heritage while never letting it confine him.
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STCD 3024CD
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2007 release. The Classic Guinean Guitar Group features instrumental recordings, made between 1970 and 1983 by the guitar-playing Diabaté brothers of Guinea, who, in various formations, led the African Virtuoses. These lush, intricate and lilting, their music carries echoes of Spain, Latin America and even the Paris of Django Reinhardt, yet its roots lie deep in Maninka traditions. This is African acoustic guitar music at its most intimate and beguiling.
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STCD 1042CD
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1993 release. Bana OK present Bakitani. When the colossus of Congo, Franco Luambo, died in 1989, the great band he had led for more than 30 years, OK Jazz, was of course, devastated. But its members survived their enormous loss and lived to rock another day. Nine of the best of them carried on as Bana OK - "Children of OK" - and sustained the signature tout puissant ("all-powerful") sound of their late master's band. The leader was saxophonist and composer Rondot Kasongo Wa Kasongo, who had long been Franco's right-hand man. Three more of these "children" were veteran guitarists Fan Fan Sesengo, Papa Noel and Thierry Mantuika. And the singers included the female star of the last years of OK Jazz, Baniel Mbambou, and the heartthrob tenor Malage de Lugendo. Bakitani would have made Franco proud.
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STCD 3067-68CD
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A collection of 27 East African golden oldies from the '70s and '80s compiled by the British DJ and journalist John Armstrong. One well-known word and a phrase in KiSwahili - "safari" and "hakuna matata" - are both useful and euphonious, but they aren't enough for a sophisticated music-lover. "Zilipendwa" denotes an object of admiration, but in a musical context it applies to what might be called "golden oldies". "Serebuka" is a lovely word that translates as "blissful expressive dance". "Musiki wa dansi" (the KiSwahili-English exchange goes both ways) is the general term for "zilipendwa" that inspires "serebuka", and it's what this double-album is all about. KiSwahili is spoken throughout East Africa (a first language for many people, a lingua franca for most) and is sung in various musical styles, but other languages give voice to other styles in this culturally diverse region, and musiki wa dansi encompasses some of them, too. One of the most prominent is benga, which originated in the 1970s among musicians of the Luo ethnic group in western Kenya, drawing on traditional rhythms and melodies but wielding electric guitars and basses. From further west came rumba and soukous, brought by Congolese émigrés to Kenya and Tanzania, where they formed bands that often included musicians from all three countries, sang in Lingala, KiSwahili and local languages, and have been enormously popular and influential since the '60s. The Arabic and Indian complexions of taraab from Zanzibar, Lamu and other islands off the East African coast colored pop music in the mainland cities of Mombassa, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as well, particularly with the chakacha beat. Armstrong gives lively recollections of a bygone time in a wonderful place grace the album booklet. Two and one half hours of 21 Kenyan, Tanzanian and Congolese bands. Features: L'Orch. Dar International, Afro 70, Kauma Boys Band, Super Mambo Jazz Band "69", Maquis du Zaire, Victoria Jazz Band, Orchestre Conga Internationale, The Golden Kings Band, Sunburst Band, Urafiki Jazz Band, L'Orchestre Grand Piza, Hafusa Abasi & Slim Ali and the Kikulacho Yahoos Band, L'Orch. Moja One, Sega Sega Band, L'Orchestre Super Mambo, Earthquake Jazz Band, Vijana Jazz Band, Orchestre Special Liwanza, Juwata Jazz Band and Orchestre Super Jambo.
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STCD 1072CD
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1996 release. Singa is a unique album, the only album by Kaira Ben, an assemblage of distinguished Mandé musicians from three West African countries. Singer Idrissa Magassaand guitarist Zoumana Diarra share career history in two of Mali's greatest bands, Super Djata and Super Rail Band. Saxophonist Tidiane Koné was the Rail Band's first director. Bala-xylophonist Keletigui Diabaté was in Les Ambassadeurs and continued working with Salif Keita as well as with Habib Koité and Bonnie Raitt until his death in 2012. And Cheick Tidiane Seck has played keyboards with artists as diverse as Fela Kuti and Damon Albarn, Youssou N'Dour and Dee Dee Bridgewater. The album these pros made together is an excellent exemplar of modern Mandé music.
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STCD 1066CD
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1995 release. Born a Maninka griot, young Abdoulaye Diabaté was taught the praise songs and epics that his forefathers had sung for centuries, but he grew up also listening to griots (including older cousins) performing with Mali's history-making modern bands (the Rail Band, Super Biton, Les Ambassadeurs and others). When he came of age he proved his mettle in Le Kené-Star De Sikasso, one of the most popular Malian bands of the 1980s. Equally at home in tradition and innovation, he flaunts a style that appeals to three generations, as his solo career has proved. This CD, Djiriyo, includes tracks from three cassettes arranged and produced in the early '90s by Boncana Maiga (Alpha Blondy, Africando).
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STCD 1097CD
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2003 release. "Delicious melodies, inspired and original arrangements, faultless playing, scalp-tingling voices." (John Armstrong, BBC Radio 1). "The sound is stunning and the orchestration perfect, including beautifully layered acoustic guitars, some tasty accordion, and on some tunes an all-clarinet horn section, harking back to the early days of Congolese rumba." (Banning Eyre, Afropop Worldwide). "A thread of nostalgia runs through Congo Life, yet the novel arrangements and loose-limbed swing speak of invention and ready wit." (Richard Henderson, The Wire).
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STCD 1030CD
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1990 release. If you've heard Salif Keita, Sékouba Bambino, Kandia Kouyaté or Les Ambassadeurs (either the original '70s band or the acclaimed recent reunion), you know what a marvelous guitarist Ousmane Kouyaté is, and you'll jump at the chance to hear him with his own band. He recorded Domba in 1990 after leading Salif's band on his breakthrough European and American tours. Jean-Philippe Rykiel, an arranger and producer who worked on Soro (1987), Salif's monumental solo debut album, brings his innovative wizardry to this project as well, but here, while the singers (including Ousmane himself) are top-flight, the focus is rightly on the masterly guitar.
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STCD 3023CD
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2005 release. Nyboma Mwan'dido was one of the most popular singers in Zaire (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo) when, in 1981, he and his guitarist, Dally Kimoko, moved to Lomé, Togo, for a long-term engagement with the African All-Stars. There, under the name Nyboma & Kamalé Dynamique, they recorded Doublé Doublé, an album that blended Congolese soukous, West African highlife, Caribbean zouk, and American disco into a new dance sensation. A hit all over Africa, it was subsequently released in Europe and North America. Over the next four years Nyboma made four more albums with this band, which included guitarist Syran Mbenza, bassist Bopol Mansiamina, and drummer Ringo Moya. The ten Kamalé Dynamique tracks collected in this Sterns CD are now classics, the best representation of an exciting era when Congolese music became pan-African and went on to win fans around the world.
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STCD 1084CD
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1999 release. Dakar: Africa's most vibrant city; hustling, bustling, dusty streets; searing heat and brilliant colors; the surreal juxtaposition of heaving markets and shanties with fancy restaurants and plush nightclubs; a metropolis positively teeming with young musicians boasting equal measures of attitude and talent. "Boul falé," they say: "Never mind." It's the terse expression of a Senegalese generation that's fed up with its lot and determined to be heard. Never mind -- music like this will be heard loud and clear. Includes tracks by Assane Ndiaye & le Raam Daan; Assane Mboup & le Mbouba Dialy; Ousmane Seck & le Raam Daan, Marie Ngoné Ndione; Fallou Dieng & le DLC; Gelongal; Bada Seck; Tata & Salaam Band; Mati Thiam Dogo; Fatou Guewel & Sope Noreyni; Alioune Kassé & Kassé Stars; Lemzo Diamono; and Assane Ndiaye, Thione Seck & le Raam Daan.
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STCD 1080CD
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1997 release. Born a Touré, a descendent of one of the oldest noble families of the Malinké people, Fantani was by custom forbidden to sing in public, but won school prizes for her singing and dancing. She also earned a degree in business management and opened a clothing boutique in Bamako, Mali. Two of Mali's greatest musicians convinced her to share her musical talents with the public: the great kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, who persuaded her to join his concert orchestra, and Mali's most famous singer, Salif Keïta, who produced her first CD, N'tin Naari, which Sterns Music released internationally in 1997. A role model to Fantani for the way he had defied the conventions of his noble birth, Keïta encouraged her to present her true self, beholden to neither tradition nor passing fads. There was no going back. Fantani Touré went on to international festivals and tours and feature roles in two popular Malian films. Named Malian Star of the Year in 2003, she used her fame to advocate for girls' education and women's entrepreneurship. She died in 2014 at the age of 50.
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STCD 1091CD
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2000 release. Ismaël Isaac was a 15-year-old growing up in a densely-populated lower-working-class district of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, when Bob Marley died in 1981, and it was a defining moment for him; that was when, he recalls, "reggae became, de facto, a genre of African music." It was also when an older neighbor who called himself Alpha Blondy started singing reggae songs in local languages. And that's when Isaac made up his mind to be a reggae singer himself. With little more than faith in his talent, he managed to get himself on Ivorian radio and television and soon on records. Black System is his seventh album and his strongest. Listening to this, one might be convinced that reggae has been African music forever.
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STCD 1026CD
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1989 release. Almost two decades into a career that had brought him super-stardom in Zaire, Papa Wemba made his international debut. He worked with the French producer Martin Meissonnier, who had helmed King Sunny Adé's first international releases with great success. Meissonnier put both African artists and their bands in first-class European studios, convinced them to tighten up their long songs, and filled out their sound with discreet synthesizers, but otherwise let them do what they knew best. In Papa Wemba's case, that was soukous with high-energy beats, hypnotic guitars and, of course, his distinctive tenor voice. With this album's release in 1989, Papa Wemba embarked on tours of Europe, North America, and Japan that made him one of the top stars of the new "world music" craze. He was soon signed by Warner Bros., but that would not have happened without this now-classic Sterns album.
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STCD 1126CD
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The Mandé art of jeliya carries a long and complex tradition of fine distinctions and endless debates about the qualities that earn its hereditary poets, musicians, and soothsayers the highest accolades and honorifics. But on the subject of the great jelimusolu (female singers) of our time, there is near-unanimity regarding Kandia Kouyaté: she is a ngara, perhaps the only one of her generation. More than a skilled singer, a ngara is an extraordinary artist who possesses what many would say is a paranormal aura of majesty. Born and raised in Kita, an ancient city in southwestern Mali that has bred many important musicians, Kandia began performing professionally in Bamako while still a teenager, and quickly became quite successful; she saw no reason to make records. But among her most ardent fans was record producer Ibrahima Sylla, who implored her to give him the opportunity to make an album with her. She resisted, he persisted, and nine years later Kita Kan (Sterns, 1999) was released to international acclaim; the beautiful Biriko (Sterns, 2002) followed. In 2004 Kandia Kouyaté suffered a stroke. Her recovery was slow and difficult, and for seven years she hardly spoke and did not sing at all. Even after regaining her strength she considered herself retired. By that time Ibrahima Sylla was in failing health, but he had not lost his ardor for her voice or his awe of her aura, and in 2011 he visited her home in Bamako and convinced her to return to the recording studio. Sadly, he did not live to complete the album. He died in 2013, and François Bréant, who had worked with him on such recording landmarks as Salif Keïta's Soro (Sterns, 1987) and Thione Seck's Orientation (STCD 1100CD, 2005), finished the project. "This new album was made only because of Sylla," says Kandia. "I had been ill and Sylla was gravely ill, but he was always there [in the studio], encouraging me. He asked me to sing everything I knew, everything that that was in my head. I said 'I know nothing. I've forgotten everything.' But he insisted. 'Tomorrow it will come back,' he said." And it did. Her voice, darker and richer than when it first carried her to fame decades ago, has an authority that arises from a very deep well and cannot be faked. It is the voice of a true ngara. Renascence is her resounding declaration of personal and artistic rebirth.
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STCD 1100CD
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2005 release. Esteemed by many Senegalese as their country's most poetic songwriter and greatest living singer, Thione Seck achieved his most celebrated work with Orientation. Recorded in Dakar, Cairo, Madras, and Paris over a span of three years that involved an intercontinental cast of 11 singers and 24 instrumentalists, this album is an exploration of the diverse musical paths that have transported Seck, starting with the Wolof griot tradition into which he was born and the Sufi muezzin's call to prayer he has heard all his life, and proceeding to the Arabic pop music picked up by radio from across the Sahara, the movie soundtracks of Bollywood musicals, and the urban Senegalese mbalax style that he helped invent. It's a wonder that they all come together so splendidly, but -- as the Senegalese say -- wow!
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STCD 4001CD
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2002 release. Born in France to an Algerian Berber mother and a Spanish father, Kad Achouri grew up speaking four languages, studied piano at the conservatory in Toulouse, and played jazz in Barcelona before moving to London, where he fit right into the city's multicultural music scenes. He wrote and arranged music for Arabic pop star Natacha Atlas, and that led to recording Liberté in Athens with members of the Atlas band and some of the best jazz musicians in Greece. In addition to his piano, Achouri played flute and drums, programmed the electronics, and sang in French, Arabic, Spanish, and English. Billboard compared Achouri to Manu Chao -- with "a jazzier approach" -- and French critics likened him to Serge Gainsbourg (they would, wouldn't they?), while others were reminded of Caetano Veloso, David Byrne, or Ryuichi Sakamoto. The BBC called Liberté "absolutely superb."
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STCD 1125CD
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After a career that spanned a half-century, in which he became the most famous musician from Burkina Faso and a legend of African popular music, Amadou Balaké died in 2014 at the age of 70. This album contains his final recordings. Born Amadou Traoré in Burkina Faso when it was still the French West African colony called Upper Volta, he was given the name Balaké by Guinean fans who especially liked the way he sang the Mande classic of that title. By that time (the late 1960s) he had been performing as an itinerant singer, guitarist, and percussionist all around West Africa. On returning to his homeland in 1970, Amadou Balaké sang with a succession of groups in the capital, Ouagadougou. Building on widely popular Afro-Cuban and funk styles as well as the Mande repertoire modernized by such bands as Guinea's Bembeya Jazz and Mali's Rail Band, he incorporated local warba dance rhythms into his music and sang primarily in the Mossi language of Burkina Faso, establishing a distinct Burkinabé sound. It was a sound that traveled well as Balaké resumed his roving. He recorded his first album in Accra, Ghana, in 1976; his second in Lagos, Nigeria; the next two in Abidjan, Ivory Coast; and then his classic salsa album, Amadou Balaké à New York, in that city, with some of its top Latin sidemen, in 1979. He was based in Paris for most of the '80s but eventually settled in Ouagadougou. In 2000, Ibrahima Sylla, the preeminent African record producer, invited Balaké to join the international salsa supergroup Africando -- a match made in Spanish Harlem, one might say, considering that Balaké preceded Africando in working with Latin musicians in New York. With Africando Balaké recorded four albums and toured far and wide. He was still giving weekly shows in Ouagadougou when the French music journalist Florent Mazzoleni met him there in 2013 and produced the recordings that would prove to be the old master's last testament. Accompanied by young local musicians, he revisited some of his favorite songs, including his namesake, "Balaké," which he had never previously recorded. Captured mostly in one take with few overdubs, these tracks present a performer seasoned by decades of experience and in full command of his art.
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STCD 1076CD
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1997 release. Mbalax is the popular Senegalese music and dance style invented in the late 1970s and early '80s by young men such as Youssou N'Dour, Thione Seck, and Omar Pene. The generation that followed them put its own wild spin on the style and called it marimbalax -- hard mbalax. This errant offspring's leading torch-bearer was Lamine Faye, a guitarist in Omar Pene's band, Super Diamono, who soon formed his own powerhouse, Lemzo Diamono. Keening voices, frenetic tama drums, thundering sabar drums, synthesized xylophones, and, above all, Faye's hard-rocking guitar: that was marimbalax. For this, Lemzo Diamono's international debut, Sterns Africa has selected the best tracks from the band's first three Senegalese albums, first released in 1992 and '93.
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STCD 1106CD
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2008 release. The first words heard on Wamato are "The Amazones are back with a vengeance!" You don't need to understand the language to hear the exultation in that female voice. The bravado and joy never let up until the sudden hush after the last notes of the last track. Formed in 1961, Les Amazones de Guinée is band composed of women in the Army of the Republic of Guinea. They don't play many marches anymore, though; they specialize in that singular mix of traditional West African music, jazz, Latin music, rock 'n' roll, and funk that Guinean bands like Bembeya Jazz National are famous for. Bembeya Jazz, however, never had a saxophonist like Commandant Djenabou Bah or a singer like Lt. M'mah Sylla. Wamato is the Amazones' second album, their first in 25 years, and it's a triumphant return.
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