65 f


KAREYCE FOTSO Mokte Contre-Jour CJ032


Remarkably versatile Cameroonian is equally convincing on the understated (eg acoustic guitar, Hang On Sloopy riff) as on the more complex stuff, such as an expert attempt at samba. Her projection and presentation are confident and persuasive. With a background including biochemistry, cinema, broadcasting and photography, she has won awards for comedy, sung backing for Sally Nyolo and been invited to guest with Habib Koite. Is there anything Kareyce Fotso can’t do? Her songs speak for self-belief and against tribal- ism. Life is not fair, but emigration is no answer. She plays guitar with feel and finesse, she sings with sensitivity and reserves of power, and the album holds together beauti- fully. Some artist.


www.contrejour.com Rick Sanders


TOMMY McCARTHY & LOUISE COSTELLO Grace Bay COPP026


JACQUELYN HYNES Silver and Wood Hobgoblin HOBCD 1015


LEONARD BARRY New Road Own label, lb 002


Those living in London in the 1970s may well recall the presence of The McCarthy Family on the traditional music scene, led by the late concertina-player, tin whistler and uilleann piper Tommy McCarthy from County Clare. His and his wife Kathleen’s home in Hornsey was host to all manner of impromptu musical sessions and each of their four children grew up inspired by their highly musical environ- ment. In 2002, said quartet combined, along with their respective partners, to record, as The McCarthys, The Family Album. Now fid- dler Tommy junior and his wife, accordeonist and banjoista Louise Costello, have finally released their own album, Grace Bay.


It’s a sumptuous affair, inspired partly by their own musical influences (Tommy’s fiddle possesses the inherent ‘nyah’ of West Clare and Louise’s box-playing owes much to the traditions of north Galway, while her banjo plays homage to Charlie Piggott of De Dan- nan) and the fact that the pair have run the renowned Burren Bar in Boston, MA, for almost 20 years which has hosted many an Irish session or gig.


Recorded in Miltown Malbay, Co Clare, with the assistance of their daughter Rose on fiddle, and Noel O’Grady (bouzouki), Martin O’Malley (guitar/bass) and ‘Ringo’ McDon- agh (bodhrán), Grace Bay is an evocative mélange of tunes. There’s The Drunken Gauger, a stately set dance learned from the fiddler Bobby Casey, a rollicking set of reels, including The Stolen Purse, which originates from Camden Town sessions in the 1990s, and a rendition of the jig Strop The Razor which could easily slot into a re-release of Paddy In The Smoke.


Box and fiddle blend together without any aural stitches to make this a memorable album.


www.burren.com www.copperplateconsultants.com


Maintaining the London and Clare con- nections is flutist Jacquelyn Hynes whose debut album, Silver And Wood, reflecting her instruments’ material, was partly recorded in both locations.


It’s not so much a parson’s egg of an album as a bishop’s battery farm. There are plenty of inspiring Irish traditional dance


SON PALENQUE


Afro-Colombian Sound Modernizers VampiSoul VAMPI CD 158


Son Palenque (‘they are Palenque’) sprang from impromptu 1970s jam sessions on the beaches of Cartagena fuelled by young migrants from the rural coastal communities of Colombia, descendants of escaped West Central Africans who formed palenques (for- tified villages) in resistance to the colonial regime of slavery. The linguistic and socio - economic isolation of palenquera culture sustained a heavily percussive call-and- response music, augmented by Son Palenque with amplified guitar, saxophone and electric bass, and tinged with 1980s Latin psychedelic sounds, regional roots genres – cumbia, champeta, bullerengue, chalupa, lumbalú, Cuban son, and a variety of pan-African strains.


Kareyce Fotso


tunes (mostly recorded in Clare with the long- standing trio of fiddler Yvonne Casey, and Eoin O’Neill and Quentin Cooper on bouzou- ki and banjo respectively), and a soulful, if slightly over-breathy, solo flute rendition of Her Mantle So Green. However, elsewhere, Jacquelyn seems to be intent on exploring another planet.


For instance, her rendition of the song


The Cuckoo comes complete with a com- pletely inappropriate flute introduction derived from a Baroque piece composed by Louis-Claude Daquin. Then there’s the truly bizarre Greensleeves, with her own rather trite poetry recited stiltingly over a poorly- played harpsichord backdrop. Still, the album’s well worth hearing just for Jacque- lyn’s luscious playing of the jigs The Rookery and Tommy Mulhaire’s.


hobgoblinrecords.com


Lastly comes New Road, the second solo album by the North Kerry uilleann piper Leonard Barry and, boy, is it a beauty! Though, like many of his contemporaries, Leonard has a tendency to accelerate his tunes, his sheer dexterity and control of one of the most difficult instruments on the plan- et raises his music to a higher plane.


For instance, on the set of reels The Lim- erick Lasses / Johnny McGhooan’s / The Laurel Tree he employs chanter, regulators and drones to invigorate the tunes with both drive and passion. His pipes can also march steadfastly in cahoots with John Carty’s banjo on Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine, and his ver- sion of Clare fiddler Junior Crehan’s Poll Ha’Penny somehow imbues the tune with an esoteric sense of yearning, wholly against the usual run of your usual hornpipe playing.


Of course, the true test of a piper is his or her playing of airs and Leonard offers two for our delectation. The first is the tune of an unrequited love song, Iníon An Fhaoit’ Ón Ngleann, played with glorious restraint, while the second, O’Rahilly’s Grave, is an emotional tour de force.


Perhaps best of all is a storming rendi- tion of Carolan’s Planxty Davis in which Barry’s pipes soar, swoop and wail in stacca- to excitement to the accompaniment of Rick Epping’s harmonica and concertina. The resulting effect on at least this listener’s ears is one of utter jubilation. Such should music be.


www.leonardbarry.ie Geoff Wallis


Colombians themselves often mistook Son Palenque for Jamaican, Haitian or ‘African’ artists, but the ensemble gained popularity with radio audiences and dancers in Cartagena and Barranquilla, defining the Afro-Colombian sounds; their several 1980s recordings infuse this twenty-track compila- tion. Songs like Achinagua and Tilitata have a remarkable resemblance to 1980s Garifuna punta rock, likely a combined product of radio broadcasting and Caribbean migratory labour patterns, and the careful listener may likewise detect contemporary Brazilian, French Caribbean and South and West African elements. Son Palenque fell on hard times in the 1990s but reunited in 2012: Adiós Batata is the sole included product of their recent reunion. The twenty-page illustrated booklet, in Spanish and English, offers impor- tant context and history of a critical, if little- known, chapter in the music of the New World African Diaspora


www.munster-records.com Michael Stone


LA BERGÈRE Ètreintes AEPEM 14 | 01


Sylvie Berger has been around, working with leading French musicians since the early 1990s, collaborating with the likes of Éric Montbel, Jean Blanchard, Gabriel Yacoub and Emmanuel Pariselle The quality of all her recorded singing is always high whether on be solo albums or with the superb group Tradmania. It is doubtful if any of her previ- ous albums offer as much sheer enjoyment as this current offering; it surrounds the listener with a sense of wellbeing rather like the ‘Hugs’ of the title. She is joined in La Bergère by Pariselle and Julian Biget with two other top musicians as guests, Giles Chabenat and Yannick Hardouin.


There are no fancy tricks, no attempts to be too clever; this is just a well-chosen and varied selection of traditional songs with a few written in that style and all sung and accompanied in a way that is utterly sat- isfying and appropriate. We are offered a range of the moods found in folk song; a contemplative drinking song, Le Plaisir D’Être À Table and a glorious Mariniers De Loire, but best of all is the final track, the dark, brooding Grand Maître De La Nuit written by Jaques Banhaïm which has all the qualities of Richard Thompson when he is at his sombre best.


With the lyrics all appearing in the well- designed and arresting booklet to supple- ment the delicious sounds, it is not often that an album that gives so much pleasure comes this way.


www.aepem.com Vic Smith


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