Songlines Music Awards 2024, Europe winner: Sam Lee - songdreaming

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 204, January 2025.

Sam Lee
songdreaming
Cooking Vinyl (48 mins)

Since making his debut with the Mercury-nominated album Ground of its Own in 2012, Sam Lee has become one of the country’s most renowned champions of the folksong of these isles. But his work and his sound have evolved through the years. With his fourth album, he continues his mission of connecting the issues of the land with the music of its people, exploring the themes of ecology, wilderness and wildlife that are close to his heart.

There’s no musical purism here. Lee uses folk songs as a medium with which to decorate his own canvas, leaving them recognisable but changed, moulded to his own meanings and shaped for a new era. The music itself moves further away from the traditional. It’s a vast sound, dramatic and atmospheric, informed by contemporary neoclassical movements. Sweeping strings, heavily-reverbed piano and curlew calls mingle with resonant subtleties of nyckelharpa and qanun, as well as appearances throughout by London-based trans choir Trans Voices on their recording debut. There is something mystical about it, almost, or darkly ethereal, with Lee’s elegant yet forthright voice floating through it as a spirit.

This is not a cheerful album. Through his ballads, Lee constructs a complex, sometimes contradictory, weave of emotions. songdreaming is a love letter suffused with controlled fury, but also a dignified, determined and necessary hopefulness – a passionate yearning for the survival of our home in nature. We’ve seen Sam Lee progress from wunderkind singer and song collector to a respected spokesperson of the planet, its custodians (of all species) and its sounds, while his music becomes ever more beguiling and important.

Peter Somuah - Highlife

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 204, January 2025.

Peter Somuah
Highlife
ACT Music (45 mins)

In his previous work, Ghanaian trumpeter Peter Somuah has brought flavours of highlife into the idiom of contemporary jazz. With his third album, he switches it up by accentuating the innate jazz in highlife. Here, Somuah is accompanied by his Dutch and Surinamese quintet, together with guest vocal spots from highlife legends including Gyedu-Bley Ambolley and Pat Thomas, who add a political edge to proceeding with lyrics ruminating on the colonial history and legacy of their homeland.

Although the lyrics are pointed, the music itself is loose and laid back, really bringing out highlife’s eponymous feel-good vibes. The recording and production are also nice and clean, and it all adds up to a supremely smooth sound throughout the whole album. Somuah’s passion for both highlife and jazz is obvious in his compositions, arrangements and sparkling solos, which are invariably the highlights of each track.

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.

Press release: Jupiter & Okwess - Ekoya

First written as a press release for the album for Ballantyne Communications.

Jupiter & Okwess
Ekoya
Airfono (36 mins)

Veteran stars of the Kinshasa street music scene Jupiter & Okwess return with their fourth album, Ekoya, representing an exciting new chapter for the band, blending their signature sound of soulful Congolese funk, rock and soukous with new influences from across Latin America, inspired by eye-opening cross-cultural encounters and the shared history of African people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Recorded in Mexico, Ekoya (‘It Will Come’) explores themes of change and resilience, of Indigenous peoples’ issues and the joys and struggles of everyday life. With guests including Brazilian singer Flavia Coelho, Mexican Zapotec rapper Mare Advertencia, and Congolese singer Soyi Nsele, and featuring lyrics in eight languages across its 12 tracks, Ekoya marks Jupiter & Okwess as both proudly Congolese and profoundly international.

This is music that is unmistakable in its origins, its rhythms and melodies shaped by three decades of evolution on the streets of Kinshasa. But Latin America looms large over Ekoya. The album was conceived in 2020, when Jupiter & Okwess were touring South America, an adventure shaped by the spectre of lockdowns. Once the tour concluded, the band were forced to pause in Mexico before returning home – a transformative experience as they found themselves immersed in Latin American culture. Jupiter reflects: “Latin America has influenced us a lot… but our music hasn’t changed, it has just been given a new dimension. When we were there, we discovered things that pushed us to think differently. Because it’s like a continuation of Africa. There are people there who have African roots, Congolese roots – they are part of the story of Africa. They are part of us, and they are a part of our music.” When it came time to record the album, Mexico was the natural destination, where they spent time in studios in Guadalajara and Mexico City, and worked with producers including the renowned Camilo Lara (Pixar’s Coco; Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever). “Each time we visit Latin America, we’re happier, we’re more comfortable. And it’s best to record in a place with nice people, good food, and good weather!”



Since his debut in 2013, Jupiter’s sound has been defined by its weight, a purposeful heaviness, a rawness, even a darkness tinting the driving Kinshasa funk-rock and the softer, more introspective and sometimes ominous moments. Those signature styles remain, but are joined here by moments of lightness, sometimes ascending to a full-on dance party with soukous at the forefront – a well-known Congolese style that itself is infused with an indelible Latin influence, shown to full effect on the song ‘Nkoyi Niama’. Okwess’ choppy guitars, bouncing bass, glorious harmonies and pounding beats push that classic sound to the next level.

All throughout his music, Jupiter displays his mastery of the poetic word, communicating deep meanings through proverbs and parables. Lead single ‘Les Bons Comptes’ warns against being in debt to friends. “Good accounts make good friends,” sings Jupiter in French, adding in the Mongo language: “a deadbeat is like a cuttlefish, they only take and never give.” Be a good friend, be honest and pay your bills. The message is also taken up by Brazilian songstress Flavia Coelho, whose lusciously smooth and light voice works a beautiful counterpoint to Jupiter’s resonant, gravel-worn rumble. “It was good to share this with Flavia,” Jupiter explains. “She’s been a friend for a long time. When we see her at a festival, we share a song on stage, just for fun. So, when we’re in Latin America, and we’re making a new album, it was only natural to ask her to join us.”

Themes of change and resilience permeate Ekoya. “Everything is changing, on a global scale,” says Jupiter. “Politics, climate change, Covid. You feel it in Europe, and we feel it even stronger in Kinshasa. But, on the other hand, tout passera – everything will pass. After life, nothing. You don’t have to be so focused on material things, on money, on property – tout passera. That’s not optimist or pessimist – it’s just the truth.” Resilience is also found in lyrics presented by powerful Indigenous women activists, including Mongo singer Soyi Nsele who calls upon the ancestors to intercede against the unthinkable destruction of the Congolese rainforest in the opener ‘Selele’; and Zapotec rapper Mare Advertencia, who leads a hard-hitting demand for rights and justice for oppressed Indigenous communities around the world on the song ‘Orgullo’, with the words: “We demand our right to exist / For the memory of those they took from us / For the justice we are still seeking!”

When Jupiter was young, he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a diplomat. But, as he says, “Destiny is complicated. Life changed, and my life was making music on the streets in Kinshasa. But now we are performing all over the world, doing interviews, telling the world about the Congolese people – well, now I have the chance to be a diplomat. I did it differently.” Developed in Kinshasa, blossomed in South America, born in Mexico and now released on the world, Ekoya continues Jupiter & Okwess’ important work as skilled wordsmiths highlighting universal issues, as champions of a world that is safe and welcoming for all, and as musical diplomats of their very own brand of forward-facing roots-focused Congo sound.


Photo: Jupiter & Okwess, by Marcelo Quiñones.