root salad Fofoulah
The sound of the sabar meets jazz grooves in this London-Gambia band. Jamie Renton is well impressed.
T
he story of London-based West African roots-meets-jazzy-grooves ensemble Fofoulah starts with the sound of the sabar drum. The
signature West African percussion instrument exerted a hold on British drummer Dave Smith the first time he visited Gambia over a decade ago. He was there with a group of fellow students from the Guildhall School of Music, to study local culture. “Whilst we were there, we got exposed to some amazing drumming and dancing,” he tells me. “We went to loads of performances and ceremonies, saw an all night wrestling match with drumming. It all had a massive impact on me and when I came away from there I deciding to carry on checking out sabar drumming in London.” He’s been going back to West Africa ever since (five more trips following that initial visit).
We ought to introduce Dave properly.
He’s an unassuming, bespectacled young chap and yet mention him to musicians (especially drummers) and they tend to go a bit fanboy! He comes from a jazz back- ground, but also plays with Juju (aka Justin Adams and Juldeh Camarah) and Robert Plant’s band Strange Sensation.
A couple of years after the first trip to Gambia, Dave formed his jazz group Out- house and subsequently hit on the idea of combining his two main musical passions: free jazz and sabar drumming. With money from the Arts Council and the BBC Performing Arts Fund, he took Outhouse out to the Gambia to mix things up with local skin bashers. “Sabar drumming involves a number of drums,” he explains. “But there are five main drums and they all hold roles within the group. There’s lots of different dance styles. I understand the basics, how these drums work. What we were doing in Outhouse was writing music within the structure of that. Studying the drumming and then directly taking the drum notes and using those to write melodies and create communication. In some cases replacing the dancer with, say, a saxophone solo.”
One of the five drummers they
worked with out in Gambia, Kaw Secka, moved to London in 2006 and he and Dave have been developing the jazz- meets-sabar project together ever since, hooking up with two members of Out- house (bassist Johnny Brierley and saxman Tom Challenger) to form the roots of what became Fofoulah.
In 2010 the excellent (and criminally underrated) UK-based Senegalese singer Biram Seck moved up to London from Bris- tol. Seck had previously been involved in
the band SUUF (who released a well- received album on the BBC Late Junction label back in 2003). Kaw Secka was a friend of his and introduced him to Dave. Biram’s been singing with Fofoulah ever since, adding a shot of soul to the musical daring and rhythmic dexterity that charac- terise the band’s sound. Once Phil Steven- son, a funky jazz guitarist with a taste for West and South African styles, was drafted in, Fofoulah were in full flight.
“It’s definitely song-based,” says Dave of the Fofoulah sound.”And groove- based. So you’ve got this amazing singer, who writes his own songs and is very much taking influence from his heritage, which is Wolof music. Although his father is a Fulani, so although he sings in Wolof, he brings a Fulani edge to it too. The starting point for writing is the sabar drum, because that’s the meeting place, the point where we can all understand. If it starts sounding exciting, quite often Biram will start smiling, moving a bit and singing. He’ll improvise. Sometimes it will just come to him and we’ll have a song straight away (it feels quite magical when that happens). Then we’ll deconstruct it. Work out how we’re going to get from one sec- tion to another and what we need. We’re very aware of the fact that this is dance music and the response of the audience is very important.” And it is dance music.
F
They may have begun life as a free jazz meets West African percussion group, but nowadays Fofoulah are all about the groove. “You could call it sabar funk” as Dave puts it.
ofoulah’s debut EP, Bene Bop, was released in May on Loop Records (the label of the Loop Collective of London jazz musicians of which Dave is a member) and provides a good showcase for the band’s warm, dub- flecked sound. The title means ‘One Head’ in Wolof, referring to both the democratic nature of the band’s working practices and the peaceful co-existence of myriad cultures that characterise Senegalese (and London) society. Of all the tracks My Heart is the one that Dave reckons represents the band best. “It was one of the first we wrote together, it combines lots of elements, but has got an original sound.” Then there’s the track Fofoulah. “It means ‘It’s there!’. If you do something good, you can say ‘Fofoulah!
great...that’s it!’ It’s a way of recognising that you’ve got to a good place.”
Fofoulah launch the Bene Bop EP at the Loop Collective’s Digital Africa night at Rich Mix, 35–47 Bethnal Green Road, Lon- don, E1 6LA on 7th June.
www.richmix.org.uk
www.fofoulah.com F 19 f
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84