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Karindula!
Certainly the gang’s all here – the Fraser sisters on fiddle and sax, Paul Burgess, Flos Headford, John Adams, Neil Gledhill, Heather Horsley (supplying the lovely basic piano tempo at the root of it all) and Martin Brins- ford on harmonica and occasionally unex- pected percussion that even includes a jaunty hammering of skulls and cymbals on the joy- ous Queen’s Jig/Basque Jig – and they are clearly having a ball. There’s no concession to modern technology or fancy techniques, and nor would we want it as they revisit a lot of early favourites – Walter Bulwer’s 2 & 1, Dash- ing White Sergeant/Brighton Camp, The Woodcutter’s Jig/The Swedish Dance, Gloucestershire Hornpipe and The Matelot/Michael Turner’s Jig among them.
They do spread their wings on the busy
Quebecois reel Grand Chain, which neatly segues into Jo Freya’s tune Grommet, while another highlight sees the stately pipe march Earl Of Mansfield gambol winningly into Bobby Shaftoe, informative sleeve notes giv- ing detailed provenance of each track.
It’s fun. So smile, dance, throw the teapot out of the window. A carefree English folk institution bounds happily on…
www.wildgoose.co.uk Colin Irwin
VARIOUS ARTISTS The Karindula Sessions Crammed CRAW70
Just over the border from northern Zambia is the Congolese city of Lubumbashi, which is where this astounding set comes from. It’s immediately clear that this Congolese karindula, while not electric Zam- bian kalindula, is a close acoustic relative.
Traditionally-based kalindula is some of the most heart-warming music I know. It’s got a fast, skittering beat, and a tendency for soft, melodious vocal lines that declaim and fall quietly away. There’s space, air and velo - city, and much unstated. This has the same heady clarity and the same warmth, played with high and low percussion, a stringed instrument like a long-necked ukulele, and, at the heart of it all, a huge home-made banjo variant with four strings, made from an oil barrel and a goat skin. This, we learn, is the karindula. It sets the music and leads it.
The singers come and go in waves, one lead passing to another, with melody and riff morphing from shape to shape; one track here lasts half-an-hour. You may wonder how such limited instrumentation can hold your atten- tion, but this simply is not ordinary music.
It’s great, for once, to have the DVD so you can see what’s going on. It’s a street festi- val; it’s a community. There’s dancing, from sexy houris to big muscly boys in some kind of drag. An old woman coaxes serpentine rude- ness out of her aged frame. A young boy turns a bike wheel into a gyroscopic top and spins it, axle on his scalp. His poise, and that of all dancers, is supreme: what seems to be valued is stillness in response to rhythm – yes, it sounds like an oxymoron– and millimetre- fine control and suppleness. It’s a lesson that should be shown in every school in the west.
And the music goes on. Some of the karindula playing is breathtaking; at one point the player seems to be riding it like a chariot, hurling out complex lines packed with tension and invention. The singing is never less than engaging, and the constant strumming of the uke-thing is a buzz and sustenance.
Vincent Kenis of Crammed Records, among whose previous offerings to the wider world include Konono No.1 and Congotron- ics, once again unveils a vein of pure gold. If you’ve ever liked African local music, do not miss this release.
www.crammed.be Rick Sanders
MADOU SIDIKI, AHMED FOFANA, ALEX WILSON Mali Latino Alex Wilson Records AWCD7
A slightly new angle on the familiar theme of blending West African music with Afro- Cuban and Latin styles. Hank Jones’s excellent Sarala and Dee Dee Bridgewater’s mostly suc- cessful Red Earth are probably the closest touchstones for this joyfully jazzy attack on Mandé music, and Toumani Diabaté’s Sym- metric Orchestra is another touchstone for the marrying of traditional Malian styles with western jazz-derived sounds.
It’s Toumani’s brother Madou Sidiki Dia- baté who provides the kora fills for Mali Latino, with compatriot Ahmed Fofana on balafon and vocals, with Alex Wilson’s piano and Hammond organ completing a trio that forms the core of an album that veers between studied kora-jazz and rollicking, horn-driven dance numbers. It’s the big- band Bamako-meets-NY moments that are bound to draw most attention, where the trio are joined by various Malian guest vocalists (Doussouba Diabaté, Kandia Kouy- até and more) while bass, congas and all manner of brass instruments combine for some rip-roaring Mandé-salsa. Opener Donkan is a fine example of this, the kora
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