Amaka Jaji - Tidet

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 200, August/September 2024.

Amaka Jaji
Tidet
Bloc C (39 mins)

If you're anything like me, you only need three words to make you want to listen to this album: Libyan Tuareg trap. Ooof, now there's promising. And Amaka Jaji delivers. Tidet grooves right from the start: synths mixing with pentatonic Saharan guitars, drum machines set to maximum lope, Jaji’s raspy, almost-whispered and ever-so-slightly autotuned songs in Tamasheq and Arabic, field recordings of Sufi events around his hometown of Ghat sampled over deep, dark bass… Everything about this album serves to paint a portrait of a Libya-raised, Tunis-based multi-instrumentalist intimately connected to his Tuareg and Sufi roots and profoundly immersed in the popular music of the world, from hip-hop and trap to raï and electronica. In the press release, Jaji says: ‘Tidet is not just an album; it's an act of resistance and a declaration of identity from an indigenous Tuareg artist.” This is modern, outward-facing Tuareg music like you’ve never heard before – and it’s all the better for it.

Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko - Djudjon: L’Oiseau de Garana

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 200, August/September 2024.

Bassekou Kouyate & Amy Sacko
Djudjon: L’Oiseau de Garana
One World Records (61 mins)

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba have been the world’s ambassadors for Bamana jeli (griot) ngoni music since their first album in 2007. Now on their sixth, they’ve dropped the band name in favour of further highlighting the wonderful jelimuso (and Bassekou’s wife) Amy Sacko. A slightly strange move, as the band are still here and Amy only sings on half the tracks. But never mind. Djudjon is a tribute to Bassekou’s hometown of Garana, Mali, and it shows the group at their most stripped-back: no ostentatious guest musicians, no effects pedals. It grants the listener space to appreciate the interweaving textures of the ensemble, Amy’s powerful and subtle voice, Bassekou’s nimbly virtuosic ngoni – and his occasional, innovative use of a bottleneck blues slide on his lute. Bassekou and Amy aren’t breaking any particularly new ground as they have done in the past, but this is still a lovely, solid set from the first family of Bamana ngoni.

Temporal Waves - Temporal Waves

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 200, August/September 2024.

Temporal Waves
Temporal Waves
Linear Fade Records / People Places Records (63 mins)

Canadian tabla player Shawn Mativetsky has performed and recorded across many genres for the past 25 years, but this is his first album under his new moniker. Don’t let the percussion fool you – there is little South Asian to Temporal Waves except for some rhythmic phrasing and the occasional tihai. Instead, the tabla is suffused into vast, cinematic synth-futurism with dubtronic and retro video game edges – think Vangelis and Wendy Carlos playing on an Atari in a Whirl-y-Gig chill-out room. It’s all guided by a very strong sense of sci-fi aesthetic, from the hi-tech fantasy forest cover art to the synthscapes that toe the edge between optimistic utopia on one side, and menacing dystopia on the other. Temporal Waves isn’t doing anything particularly new or groundbreaking here, but he does serve up a big dose of nostalgia: the 80s and 90s vibes are real. Stick this on some bassy speakers and have a blast from futures past.