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DAWDA JOBARTEH Transitional Times Sterns STCD 1128

A very appropriate title! We hear one of the large num- ber of superb kora playing jalis from Brikama in The Gambia. His pedigree could not be bettered with Amadou Bansang Jobarteh as his father and Alhaji Bai Konteh as his grandfather.

These two were the outstanding kora play- ers who reached a wider audience in the years after Gambian independence and remain revered figures there. One of Bai’s sons, Jali Sherrifo told me that the great friendship between these two who lived about four miles apart led to one of his sis- ters marrying Amadou.

Dawda’s experience combines this incredibly rich cultural heritage with the fact that his home is now in Denmark and that he has worked with a wide range of European and American musicians and absorbed a great deal from them as well; he seems to have found working with jazzmen particular- ly rewarding; not surprising when you consid- er that he was a drummer in a Copenhagen jazz band before he took up the kora! This varied background is reflected is this album. At one end of the spectrum there is Dalua where the solo kora sounds as though it was recorded in a Brikama compound from the way it drifts into a start from a conversation with bird song (a bulbul?) in the background, and Kanoo with singing over his own sabar drum playing. At the other end there is John Coltrane’s Transition where he spars with sax- ophone, bass and drums, and the experimen- tal jazz played on an electric kora with effects on Jamming In The Fifth Dimension. In between these extremes there is also rich variety with some breathtaking inventiveness in the kora playing.

You will very few kora records where the possibilities of this wonderful instrument are explored more thoroughly than they are here; you will find none where the kora is better recorded.

www.sternsmusic.com Vic Smith MOSE ALLISON

I’m Not Talkin’: The Songs And Stylings Of Mose Allison, 1957–1971 BGP/Ace CDBGPD 304

Sadness. I had this wonderful 24-track anthology on regular play here in the dun- geon, but before I could sit at the keyboard to construct some deservingly glowing words about it, the news came in that Mose had passed away a few days after his 89th birth- day. Well, at least his many recordings like these make him immortal.

Although Mississippi-born Mose started his career as a busy, inventive post-bebop pianist, he adapted that to song accompani- ment after it became apparent that singing and songwriting was to be his USP. Look online and you’ll find that the most common descriptions of his cool, almost throwaway, bluesy and utterly unmistakeable vocal style and song lyrics are ‘laconic’ or ‘sardonic’, but that’s just scraping the surface.

In the early 1960s, Prestige put out a compilation of vocal tracks titled Mose Alli- son Sings. It was an underground hit in the UK. He never was a household name but he became a hero among musicians. His songs like Parchman Farm, Young Man Blues and Everybody Cryin’ Mercy got covered by The Who, Georgie Fame (who completely adopt- ed Mose’s vocal style), Van Morrison, John Mayall, The Clash, The Yardbirds, Eric Clap-