Jantra - Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 189, July 2023.

Jantra
Synthesized Sudan: Astro-Nubian Electronic Jaglara Dance Sounds from the Fashaga Underground
Ostinato Records (36 mins)

Jaglara is the sound of one man and one keyboard, emanating from the rural al-Fashaga region near the tripoint of Sudan-Ethiopia-Eritrea. The man is Jantra, and with his trusty Yamaha keyboard (hacked to produce distinctive Sudanese tunings and rhythms), he is known for hosting raucous street parties where he improvises, invents and innovates his music on the spot for hours on end.

This is Jantra’s first-ever release, and it’s a unique creation: a combination of his old cassette recordings and new performances from those legendary parties recorded live and directly from the keyboard, literally re-mixed together by producer Janto Koité. It’s a masterpiece of sympathetic production wizardry – and necessary to boil down Jantra’s non-stop improvisations into a ten-track album.

Each track starts as if it’s going to be fairly simple synth-powered reggae-influenced pop, but then slowly evolves into complex layers of melody, chords, rhythms and effects that expand until they fill the aural space. The slightly-loping beats push constantly forwards, compelling you to dance with your chest and shoulders, while the melodies reflect the musical cultures of Afro-Arabic Sudan in the West and the Horn of Africa in the East, and the universe beyond. Jantra and his jaglara sound are revelations of intergalactic retrofuturism from the Sudanese countryside.

Tinariwen - Kel Tinariwen

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 184, January/February 2023.

Tinariwen
Kel Tinariwen
Wedge (36 mins)

You know Tinariwen. Hypnotic Tuareg assouf music from bluesy electric guitars, slithering out of amps encrusted with Saharan sand, and accompanied by a gravelly chorus, ululations, djembé and handclaps. Kel Tinariwen isn’t that – at least, not quite. The group were already veterans of their own style by the time of their first international release in 2001, with several tapes floating around Sahelian markets before that. This was their first, recorded in Abidjan in 1991, and now finally dug from the archives and masterfully restored.

Kel Tinariwen is clearly a pop record. Each song is filled with programmed drums, keyboards of the cheesiest variety (including synthesized sitar, choir and xylophone) and very 80s reverb. The bare-bones aesthetic of assouf is replaced with reggae lilts and Latin rhythms. However, aside from an uncharacteristic guitar-less opener (with slightly questionable vocals from producer Keltoum Sennhauser), the classic Tinariwen sound remains unmistakeable, with haunting melodies and some excellent guitar moments.

I can’t argue that these tracks are as musically scintillating as the band’s later recordings, but as a cultural artefact, this album is certainly a fascinating and curious document. And with at least one other Tinariwen ‘pop’ tape bouncing around the internet, perhaps there are more discoveries to be made from this legendary band.

Lady Aicha & Pisco Crane's Original Fulu Miziki Band of Kinshasa - N'Djila wa Mudjimu

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 183, December 2022.

Lady Aicha & Pisco Crane's Original Fulu Miziki Band of Kinshasa
N'Djila wa Mudjimu
Nyege Nyege Tapes (37 mins)

This is the DIY eco-punk essence, Congo-style. Everything about Fulu Miziki has been repurposed from material rescued from the junkpile, from their instruments to their extravagant costumes that look like uniquely Congolese cyberpunk body armour with surreal masks. Almost all the instruments are percussion, alongside a one or two self-invented string-things and rough synths. Melodies emerge from the natural pitches of drums, bells, cymbals and improvised noise-makers colliding in expert polyrhythm, with the bass coming from horns and thumped tubes. Shouted lyrics get the heart-rate up to the frenetic pace required by the beats, while improvised electronics and subtle production dirty everything up through layers of distortion that only add to the hyper energy.

Fulu Miziki’s music has echoes from all the great Congolese groups over the past few decades – Konono No. 1, Staff Benda Bilili, Jupiter & Okwess International – but within that, they bring something new, an anarchic, slightly menacing but ultimately very fun cacophony that sounds futuristic while remaining squarely on the ground.

Since recording this album, Fulu Miziki have splintered into two separate groups – hence the mouthful of a band name on this release – but N'Djila wa Mudjimu still serves as a snapshot of the group’s original line-up, repertoire and ethos.

Ami Dang - The Living World’s Demands

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 183, December 2022.

Ami Dang
The Living World’s Demands
Phantom Limb (43 mins)

As a first-generation Punjabi-American from Baltimore, Ami Dang uses sitar, voice and electronics to carve a complex identity from sound. She deals with weighty topics through her music and lyrics; on her third album these include abuse, trauma, the fight for abortion rights, suicidal ideation, the pandemic, religion and capitalism, as well as brighter concepts of meditation, joy and peace.

The music itself is made of light dance pop and deeper ambient electronica, with inflections of Hindustani classical in the shape of sitar cascades and English and Punjabi-language singing enlightened with ornamental gamakas. While Dang’s lyrics deal with the pertinent themes of today, her music often harks to the past, whether it’s to 70s psychedelic rock or 2000s Indian-flavour teen pop: sometimes it comes across as classy and retro, sometimes as cheesy and dated. The album’s most interesting and intriguing moments come when the ambient side is allowed to flow most freely, such as in the tracks ‘Bālnā’, ‘Circuit’ and ‘Become’.

It feels as if Dang’s aim with this album is to be at once poppy, experimental and personally political – it’s a tricky combination, and some of those intersections end up a little jarring, with the generally light tone belying its important messages.

Ivo Papasov - WOMEX 22 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2022 delegate guide.



A large man grasps a fragile-looking stick of a clarinet and raises it to his mouth: a rapid-fire of wild runs, tricky turnarounds, leaps, squeaks and lightning-fast trills bursts forth. Ivo Papasov has been at the top of his field for the best part of 50 years – it’s just that people haven’t always realised it.

Hailing from the Turkish-speaking Roma population of Bulgaria’s Thrace region, Papasov plays Bulgarian wedding music, which he has evolved into a unique personal style with international influence from Turkish, Greek, Balkan and Roma music, as well as from jazz and off-kilter rock. His extreme virtuosity and expert command of his instrument quickly secured Papasov and his Trakija Band as the most-wanted wedding entertainers in 1970s Bulgaria. By taking an unorthodox approach to the tradition, he revolutionised it.

It wasn’t always easy: he faced persecution during the Communist crack-down on Turkish culture (even landing him a short spell in jail), and after the regime fell, wedding audiences abandoned his style for Westernised pop. A disillusioned Papasov even stopped playing altogether for a while. But genius is hard to dampen, and a resurgence in the last 20 years has seen Papasov and his band once again touring internationally, releasing critically-acclaimed albums and gathering awards as they explode their way through mind-bending time signatures at breakneck speed. It’s a wonder his clarinet doesn’t burst into flames.

It is for his resilience in remaining the epitome of his style through thick and thin; for his dedication to the advancement of Thracian and Turkish-Roma music in Bulgaria; and for his sheer, passion-filled mastery of the clarinet, that Ivo Papasov is the recipient of the WOMEX 22 Artist Award.

Francis Gay - WOMEX 22 Professional Excellence Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2022 delegate guide.



At the very core of music are the musicians. Every other aspect of our industry is about lifting up those musicians, and Francis Gay has achieved this more than most. Over the past 40 years, Gay has been involved in basically every part of the European world music industry.

He’s probably best known for his work in radio, revolutionising Germany’s Cosmo Radio (formerly Funkhaus Europa) as its head of music while hosting his own internationally-renowned shows Selektor and 5Planeten. He’s also a journalist and writer, a DJ, a promoter of concerts and clubs, a festival director and curator, a record producer, a finder of elusive musicians and an all-around expert on the musical here-and-now. He raises artists up every step of the way, bringing attention to special sounds that would otherwise remain unheard. He doesn’t guard his expertise jealously, either: he’s a familiar face at industry events all over the world, spreading his knowledge far and wide and always mentoring the younger generation of professionals. He’s even been ever-present at WOMEX since he spoke and DJed at the inaugural event in 1994.

It is undeniable that without him, the shape of music in Europe would look – and sound – very different. It is for his passionate and tireless commitment to the worldwide musical community; for introducing the world’s best music to many, many ears; and for keeping musicians at the core, that Francis Gay is the recipient of the WOMEX 22 Award for Professional Excellence.


Photo: Francis Gay recieves his WOMEX 22 Award, by Yannis Psathas.

Introducing Nyati Mayi & the Astral Synth Transmitters

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 182, November 2022.

Nyati Mayi is a singer and lulanga (trough zither) player with roots in DR Congo. His band the Astral Synth Transmitters is actually just one man – DJ soFa, aka Christophe Hammes, a producer, synthesist and crate-digger. They’re both members of the Brussels music scene, but their musical adventure together started out of the blue: “Nyati always sends spontaneous recordings of himself to his friends over text messages,” says Hammes. “During lockdown one morning, I turned on my phone and the recording he’d sent did me a lot of good. I walked directly from my bed to the studio next door, cut up the stuff and added synths and rhythm and sent it back. Three days later he came to my place and we started jamming.”

That was the start of a period of intense, unplanned collaboration. A spark of inspiration would become a loop over which Mayi improvised melodies and rhythms; the next day Hammes added his own synth ideas before remixing the lot into a cohesive whole – and then it’s onto the next song. “I'm very impatient, I never re-record or change much from what has been recorded. It's all about the magic of the moment.” Those 2020 sessions eventually crystallised into a debut album, Lulanga Tales, released in September 2022.

Although the duo have access to vast soundworlds of acoustic and electronic timbres, their music is pensive, even sparse. The signature twang and thrum of the lulanga is layered with complementary synth sounds and simple percussion, but the pulse is rarely defined with a strong beat. Mayi’s often wordless vocals are confident but gentle, teasing jazzy lines through the dubwise earthiness. The listener is given time and space to pause and ponder; it is, in a word, fascinating.

The music’s Congolese roots ring clear throughout, embodied in the lulanga. Although Mayi started off in the hip-hop scene, everything changed during a visit to his ancestral village of Nyangezi. “Twelve years ago when I visited my family there for the first time, I was talking about this instrument because I knew that my grandmother and grand-uncle played it,” he recalls. “20 minutes later, a guy from the village brought me the lulanga and just gave it to me. It was a new instrument to explore in my own way. For sure I didn’t play in the traditional Congo way, but with time, this lulanga has given me the opportunity to explore more and more.”

Mayi’s explorations have continued with his work with Hammes. They’re both musicians that create their own identities, and now they are discovering new styles together. For Hammes, it’s a source of admiration: “Nyati has a unique style that even transcends music. I believe that for certain people, not being part of the system helps to develop a stronger personal style; in my opinion a personal style is the highest achievement in music.” Remix-collabs between African tradi-modern and European electronic music are nothing particularly new, but Nyati Mayi and the Astral Synth Transmitters see and do things differently. With their in-the-moment process of improvised creation, their music leaves a lot to think about. Impressive work when there’s only two of them.


Photo: Nyati Mayi and his lulanga.