Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba Segu Blue MALI

BASSEKOU KOUYATE & NGONI BA

Segu Blue

Out Here OH007



WINNER BBC WORLD MUSIC AWARDS - ALBUM OF THE YEAR



You may already have a record featuring Bassekou, the ngoni player who matched the late Ali Farka Toure on the majestic title track of his posthumous album, Savane . Bassekou was also a member of Toumani Diabate's Symmetric Orchestra on last year's Boulevard de L'Independance , having been involved in both Songhai 2 (1994) and Kalanjan (1999), the bestselling collaborative projects co-produced by Lucy Duran, who is sole producer here.



But whatever you might have heard before does not really prepare you for this, the first time that a quartet of ngoni players has been recorded. How the Kronos Quartet must wish they could sound so perfectly knitted together. It's a seamless blend that defies you to pick out who is playing what. Perhaps we can isolate the bass notes at the bottom end, but the notes played by the other three players are so intricately intertwined, you would swear they were all played by just one person on one instrument, perhaps the 21-string kora. The long instrumental passages of 'Nogoni Fola' should give us a chance to unpick the patterns, but instead the whole thing is like an aural illusion, a magical trick of sound: how do they do that?



There's a similar sense of cohesion to the vocals on 'Bassekou' and 'Jonkoloni', where the lines of Ami Sacko weave in and out of the responses from the supporting male and female backing vocalists. All of this over a restless, shuffling pulse from the ngoni quartet. With every play, the concoction becomes ever more addictive. This is the Bamana sound of Segu, the region to the east of Bamako, which has in recent years been overlooked by record labels. Duran's impeccable production will surely inspire others to scour Segu for other projects after this one surfaces. But they are unlikely to find anything as remarkable.



****

Charlie Gillett

Observer





Unfortunately I’ve only got the front cover for this but the music’s so good you won’t mind.

The photo on the back wall is the lead female vocalist, Bassekou’s wife; she must have been making the coffees.





Seed the Weed!