Shaun de Waal : CD of the week
The Rough Guide books have been helping people (usually young, hip people)find their way around the world for years. Recently a set of superb music guides was added to the list -World Music, Jazz, Rock – and now, in a logical extension of the concept, here comes the CD of the book.
Of course, the CDs (they include South Africa, Cuba, the Andes, Scotland, West Africa, and more) can’t hope to be as comprehensive as the books – Classic Jazz, for instance, only reaches the 1930s. But they still provide a wonderful index to the relevant musical area.
The first half of World Music: The Rough Guide illustrates one of the most fruitful crossovers in musical history, the sounds formed by transatlantic transfers from Africa to Latin America and back. Starting with an exuberant cumba from Columbia, it makes the transition by means of Africando’s meeting of New York-based Latin players and Senegalese singers, as engineered by mega-producer Ibrahima Sylla, and then we’re into Africa proper. There’s the jumpy brass of toile de Dakar (the band that nurtured Youssou N’Dour), the stately strains of Rwanda’s Cecile Kayirebwa and the kamalengoni-harp music of Oumou Sangar, whose protest songs have won her a huge following in Mali.
The second half flies from the suspiciously New-Agey chants of Siberia’s Tanola nomads to the lovely flute/drum interplay of Japan’s Guo Yue and Joji Hirota, and onward to Hungarian wedding dances and Scottish folk.
It’s a great pity the CD booklet doesn’t contain any information about the performers and the songs, but I suppose that’s an inducement to buy the book.