Various Artists - Making Tracks 2022 (Live)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 204, January 2025.

Various Artists
Making Tracks 2022 (Live)
Making Tracks (43 mins)

When eight talented and open-minded young musicians from across the world come together to experience each other’s music and discover pathways between them, there’s always going to be some special results. That’s Making Tracks, and every year or two they empower artists through a creative residency and UK tour. This live album features the pick of Making Tracks’ 2022 concerts.

The pieces chosen for this collection tend towards the calm and deliberate, showing the intensity of listening required to succeed in these connections. In fact, it is the duos that are the best bits here, where two musicians dig deep into each other’s and their own traditions: meetings of Hindustani and Scottish voices over a shruti done; contemporary art explorations between oud and violin; Persian classical singing paired with smallpipes, or kora. Making Tracks is all about exciting and unexpected combinations, and each of these tracks represents another intercultural gem.

Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff - Magg Tekki

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 193, December 2023.

Assiko Golden Band de Grand Yoff
Magg Tekki
Mississippi Records (34 mins)

Assiko Golden Band have been a fixture on the Dakar music scene for the past 20 years, representing the Senegalese capital’s most populous – and crowded – neighbourhood of Grand Yoff. In its current form, the group is a 17-strong collective of drums, percussion and voices spanning three generations, led by poet, singer and flute player Djiby Ly. Amid the dense rhythmic tapestry, lyrics in Wolof and French give positive messages of power, hope and encouragement to stand up for those who have less, with spiritual references to Sufi Islam and Christianity throughout.

Although the band have been going for decades at this point, Magg Tekki is their debut album, and its sound has been very much crafted by Swedish producer Karl-Jonas Winqvist (also the architect behind the Wau Wau Collectif). Assiko Golden Band themselves were recorded in Dakar, but saxophones, accordion, kora, additional percussion and production effects were added later on in Stockholm. While these additions work well and supplement the Senegalese sound with references from Afrobeat, jazz and European folk, it would have been nice to hear the band in their unadulterated, direct-from-Grand Yoff form that has made them so popular in their own scene.

Ebo Krdum - Diversity

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 174, January/February 2022.

Ebo Krdum
Diversity
Supertraditional (55 mins)

Diversity is a theme in Ebo Krdum’s life. Growing up in a village in the Darfur region of Sudan, his family and friends spoke many languages between them, and the radio played music from all over West, North and East Africa. He now lives in Sweden, having fled war and political upheaval 11 years ago.

In his debut album, the self-styled ‘African blues’ guitarist and singer explores his own personal meaning of diversity – ‘peace and harmony among people despite their differences’ – using eight languages across the 12 tracks to sing about unity, justice, organisation, activism and the fight for peace. Diversity also means that Krdum isn’t fixed to one particular style. There are different influences dotted throughout: some Arabic, some reggae, and a pleasant thread of Scandinvanian folk, courtesy of performance and production from Swedish folk legends including Ale and Anna Möller. There’s also more than a hint of Krdum’s first and largest influence, Ali Farka Touré – in fact, the track ‘Aysé Konga’, appears to be a take on Touré’s classic ‘Ai Du’. Elsewhere, balafon, djembe, calabash and Tuareg-like guitar add more tones and textures that give the album a decidedly West African bent.

With Diversity, Krdum has made a solid debut album, and one that lives up to its title in terms of music, lyrics and philosophy.

Songlines Gig Guide: On Tour April - May 2018

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 137, May 2018.



A Hawk and A Hacksaw
On the back of their seventh album, Forest Bathing, the Albuquerque, New Mexico-based duo start with Balkan music and explore its connections with Turkey, the Middle East and beyond. Much like their album’s title, A Hawk and a Hacksaw evoke the anti-urban, taking their audiences on a sonic walk through the fields and trees. Usual-accordionist (and former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer) Jeremy Barnes swaps the squeeze for the jangling of the Persian santur (hammered zither) while Heather Trost’s violin sweeps across telling all-acoustic instrumental stories.

Ímar
Ímar is what happens when a folk session goes really right. The band is a truly cross-Celtic collective, its five members hailing from Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. They all have past pedigree, too: they have armfuls of awards between them, and the individual musicians are variously part of some of the most exciting young folk groups of the last decade – think Talisk, Mabon, Rura and more. Expect traditional Irish tunes with a Scottish twist, newly-composed Manx and Scots tunes, and any other mix designed to get you on your feet.

The Turbans
You can’t pin an identity on this gang. The Turbans are a stomping seven-piece that sound like Eastern Europe swinging the Middle East around by the arm in the middle of a raucous party. The members have their roots in Turkey, Bulgaria, Israel, Iran, Greece, Spain, Tunisia, Morocco and the UK, and their time is usually split between the streets of London and the beaches of Goa. You can bet they bring all that and more to their gigs, along with a big bunch of noise.

Toko Telo
Three highly respected musicians in their own rights join forces as a Malagasy supertrio combining Madagascar’s classic pop styles such as tsapiky and salegy with flecks of soul and jazz. The interweaving and overlapping guitars of veteran D’Gary and acclaimed jazzman Joël Rabesolo provide the context for the soaring, soulful voice of Monika Njava. The shows will no doubt also serve as a loving musical tribute to Malagasy accordion legend and original Toko Telo member Régis Gizavo, who passed away in July 2017.

Väsen
Having started their year with a sell-out show at Celtic Connections, the veteran Swedish trio are travelling all the way down from Shetland to Shoreham-by-Sea, bringing their many-stringed take on the polska to delight as they go. Nyckelharpa, twelve-string guitar and five-string viola combine with a joyful ease, drawing on deep roots and occasional excursions into classical music, jazz and American folk. 27 years of performing together has earned Väsen virtuosic skill and almost telepathic bandsmanship, and their status as Sweden’s premier guardians and innovators of instrumental music is well-founded.


Photo: A Hawk and a Hacksaw, by Louis Schalk.

Sousou & Maher Cissoko - Africa Moo Baalu

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 100, June 2014.

Sousou & Maher Cissoko
Africa Moo Baalu
ARC Music (56 mins)

Africa Moo Baalu means ’big people of Africa,’ and the album effectively reads as an open letter to leaders in Africa and around the world, following the increasingly familiar narrative of calling for peace across the troubled continent.

Hailing from a venerated griot family in Senegal, Maher Cissoko feels it his duty to spread this message through his songs. Sousou Cissoko, on the other hand, despite being trained in classical and folk music in her native Sweden, points out that this album is not a blending of Senegalese and Swedish music, but rather the duo exploring their own music together. In practice, however, aside from occasional verses in English or Swedish, the album is very much Senegalese, often leaving Sousou’s European-style guitar sounding fairly redundant.

Maher’s performances here are more than proficient, especially when he gets a chance to shine on the solo kora (harp-lute) piece ‘Maki’, but the arrangements on this album do seem to stifle his playing and, as a result, it is hard to tell if he is playing to his full potential.

This is inoffensive stuff but pushes no boundaries, and in the end it does feel like it’s all been done before. A nevertheless pleasant and listenable album.