Somanti
Bongo Joe Records (38 mins)
Following on from their successful first collaborative album Vodou Alé (2020), Chouk Bwa and The Ångströmers release their second full-length LP, Somanti, with Bongo Joe Records on 6th October 2023. This mature but celebratory reunion mixes the powerful Vodou rituals of Haiti with compelling avant-garde electronic music and dub, born amid the creative whirlwind of a live tour.
The two groups come from very different traditions. Chouk Bwa hail from Gonaïves, the heartland of Haitian Vodou and the birthplace of the country’s independence; their mizik rasin (roots music) is steeped in the profound spirituality of the lakou temples, the revolutionary history of their hometown, and the African heritage of its people. Brussels-based duo The Ångströmers channel their passion for musique concrète, dub, hardcore and industrial and their expert knowledge of all manner of analogue electronics into a sympathetic but all-encompassing production. Both groups are connected by their ability to whip their listeners into ecstatic trance.
Together, their music ebbs and flows. Sometimes it smoulders like crackling embers, sometimes it explodes; sometimes it is a cappella, sometimes a wall of distorted drumscapes; sometimes uplifting, sometimes disturbing. It is always both deeply traditional and deeply contemporary, a union of America, Africa and Europe. In every direction, it is dance, trance music – equally at home at a rave or in a temple.
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First crossing paths in 2016, the two groups began to formulate a joint project that led to their first performance together in 2018, and then quickly onto recording sessions. After a year of production, their debut album made it into the world. A lot has happened since then. A globally-enforced international separation meant that a tour planned for May 2020 was cancelled. The groups wouldn’t meet again for two-and-a-half years.
But the collaboration lived on, with two dubwise 12” EPs, Ayiti Kongo Dub #1 and #2, both released in 2022. When Chouk Bwa and The Ångströmers were finally reunited in May 2022, it was for an intense European tour. 32 concerts were interspersed with near-constant rehearsals, discussions, experiments, intercultural dialogue, and meticulous musical negotiations. It was during this time that the material for Somanti grew, organically.
“Being reunited again meant that we played with those tracks, we arranged them in many ways, and they became something totally different,” says Frederic Alstadt of The Ångströmers. “We had toured for about two months and we set up three days of recording sessions at a studio in Brussels, and basically we recorded everything in one day. There was one day of set-up, one day of recording and one day of fine tuning. We were playing live in the studio, and then we spent about two weeks producing it. It was done pretty fast, actually. It really came from the live energy.”
Although the process was much quicker, it has resulted in a more mature sound based on the closeness of the collaboration itself, the mutual respect and a deeper understanding of each other’s traditions, methods, and tastes.
Where Vodou Ale focussed on new compositions and narrative songs, Somanti is an album of ritual. Most of the pieces are based on ceremonial music with traditional lyrics disclosing wise proverbs. It is important to the musicians that the complexity and solemnity of the religious aspect is retained. Michael Wolteche, manager of Chouk Bwa, explains: “In Vodou, all of the rites have different rhythms. We could choose the ones that would most please Western ears, but we will not do that, we keep all of the different aspects. This is our way to respect a very complex, subtle culture. It is not just entertainment music. It is meant to bring the people to trance, but for people in Europe or the US, to bring a spiritual connection to the party.”
Chouk Bwa’s music is all-acoustic: it is the sound of wood, skin, metal, horn, and the human voice singing in Haitian Creole. There are strong cultural memories and rhythms within this music, in its invocations of the ancestral lands – the African kingdoms of Oyo, Kongo and Dahomey – and the shouted proclamations of the transcontinental Vodou spirit-deities of Legba, Ogou and Inan. There is a joyfulness in the songs, in their beautiful, relaxed harmony and dance-demanding rhythms, but there is also a darker side, an empathetic rage, bearing witness to injustice and advocating for the world’s poor.
The addition of The Ångströmers changes none of that, yet together they create a truly unique style. The cultures and their musics are combined carefully. The electronics are analogue, and vintage. No click-track, no sequencers, nothing that constricts music’s humanity in favour of rigidity and exactness: this is not a collaboration that can be restrained by the tyranny of computers. These rhythms, textures and tempos undulate like liquid, an effect only possible when each musician reacts to every other around them. As the Haitian and Belgian musicians are connected, the synthesised is linked directly with the organic, creating a seamless, cross-cultural, electro-acoustic percussive barrage. Musicians, instruments, electronics, audience, spirits: all are joined as one on Somanti.
Photo: Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers, by Davide Belotti.