Press release: Ukandanz - Evil Plan

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

Ukandanz
Evil Plan
Compagnie 4000 (28 mins)

This ain’t yer same old Ethiojazz. Ukandanz have pioneered the sound of Ethiopian crunch – at once soul and heavy metal, jazz and punk, and indisputably Ethiopian – and they’ve perfected it too. A Lyon-based quartet of complex rhythms, screaming saxophone and distorted bass thrums unite under the honeyed voice Asnaké Gebreyes, stalwart singer of the buzzing Addis Ababa scene that he still calls home. Asnaké’s Amharic-language vocals stir the soulful sweetness of Ethiopia’s classic pop into the band’s beefy, bold and intelligently aggressive style.

It’s a refreshingly unexpected synergy that has gained plaudits ranging from revered Éthiopiques producer Francis Falceto to comedian and music obsessive James Acaster. Channelling musical powerhouses as diverse as Ethiopian singer Tilahoun Gessesse and the legendary Black Sabbath, Ukandanz have been not-so-quietly making waves for the past 15 years – now they pay tribute to these musical heroes without imitation, only surprises.

Ukandanz were founded as a four-piece in the mid-2000s in France by bassist / guitarist Damien Cluzel and saxophonist Lionel Martin. But there was something missing, an essential spark that would transform their sound and take them to the next level. That spark was the golden tones of Addis Ababa soul singer Asnaké Gebreyes, a connection made by Falceto himself. Asnaké had been a staple on the Addis scene since he was 16 – he moved from his small home city of Kibre Mengist to earn his stripes as part of the legendary Police Orchestra alongside future stars Getatchew Mekurya and Hirut Bekele, before breaking out into stardom in his own right in the 1980s and later even contributing to Éthiopiques Vol. 15: Jump to Addis. He was a world away from the Ukandanz style, but his acrobatic, flexible voice was a perfect fit, and the connection was clear: “He didn’t know about rock music, about Sabbath, about Iron Maiden, but he has that same energy! It’s like the traditional musicians: it’s not rock, but they’re really rocking,” says Cluzel. And he’s no stranger to collaboration, having worked with Ethiopian legends Getatchew Mekurya and Mohammed Jimmy Mohammed, as well as Dutch jazz-punk collective The Ex and drum experimentalist Han Benninck. With Asnaké on the team, the four became five in 2010, and they’ve not looked back. The musicians live a continent apart, swapping artistic interrogations back-and-forth via WhatsApp, bashing rough-hewn arrangements into shape before polishing them through live tours and studio jams.



Rather than taking obvious cues from the well-known Ethiopian composer Mulatu Astatke like so many bands before them, they instead look to the country’s most beloved musicians – the soul superstars of the 1960s and 1970s. Icons such as Tilahoun Gessesse, Getatchew Kassa and Muluken Melesse are held up as the pantheon of pop music. But Ukandanz aren’t interested in faithful covers or the meaningless meanderings of Westerners trying to make Ethiopian music. “We don’t imitate and we don’t want to make the folklorical fusion shit. Ethiopians play Ethiopian music better than we can.” So the musicians do what they do best, creating an angular, angry math-punk, building complex polyrhythmic and polymetrical tensions based on jazz and allowing Asnaké to work his magic over the top, the two styles converging in the use of the kiñit – the iconic Ethiopian pentatonic scales that makes the music so distinctive.

Now after 15 years as a five-piece, Ukandanz are looking back to their heroes and sources of inspiration of generations past, and finding in them important meanings for the modern day. This is clearest in their intriguing cover of Black Sabbath’s 1970 protest song ‘War Pigs’. As well as hearing the musical relationship in the pentatonic feel and raw, sometimes mysterious energy, Asnaké particularly connected with the song’s anti-war lyrics, which resonate with Ethiopia’s current situation locked in a civil conflict since 2018. Sabbath’s lyrics are translated into Amharic and sung with a keening, melismatic passion. Such politically-charged statements can be dangerous in today’s Ethiopia, but some songs are too important to keep quiet.

On either side of the Black Sabbath classic are two songs associated with the kings of Ethiopian soul. ‘Yene Felagote’ (My Interest) was made famous by Tilahoun Gessesse, and Asnaké absolutely explodes out of the gates to open the album while Martin’s tenor sax bridges the conceptual gap between rock guitar and the sound of traditional Ethiopia, the masenko fiddle. Getatchew Kassa’s song ‘Lewsedesh Andken’ (One Day I Will Take You) is transformed by layers of cross-rhythms, spiky saxophone and funky organ grooves providing space for Asnaké’s charismatic strut. Both are love songs on their surface, but their lyrics are full of double entendre and semantic obfuscations, hiding multiple layers of deep meaning. This playful and poetic treatment is a powerful form of Ethiopian expression known as semena werk, wax and gold: entertaining words with profound significance at their core. Ukandanz make their music in the same way – complexities, contradictions and confluences interweave into a vibrant and effervescent eruption of unique Ethio-European noise.

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.

Hermeto Pascoal - WOMEX 24 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2024 delegate guide.



It’s easy to list Hermeto Pascoal’s accolades and impressive statistics – two Latin Grammys; multiple honorary doctorates (including one from Julliard); more than 10,000 compositions to his name; featured on many hundreds of albums – but his real achievement is that he has crafted an absolutely unique sound, a deeply personal style that continues to resonate around the world, and which has given him the status of living legend in his native Brazil.

Pascoal has a dislike for labels of any kind, and indeed, he doesn’t fit into any neat categories. He is a multi-instrumentalist, creating his art across keys, saxophones, flutes, accordion, guitar, drums, and more. If pushed, he’d settle for referring to his style as ‘universal music’. We might begin our description with jazz: Pascoal’s music is informed by all manner of jazz, from big band to bop, from hard funk fusion to the free. And it was jazz that first brought him to international recognition, especially his collaboration with Miles Davis on the 1971 album Live/Evil. From that basis in jazz, he takes off to different worlds. The avant-garde has always been an important reference in his work, allowing him to expand outwards in all directions, but he also looks inwards. He looks to his roots as a Brazilian, bringing in forro, bossa nova and Afro-Brazilian styles; and to his place in the world as a human being and a part of the wider ecosystem, working with natural materials and spaces, and experimenting with the connections between music and the Earth.

Pascoal’s approach paints a picture of a man so thoroughly immersed in music that it flows through and around him; he hears music in the world that few else can, and harnesses it, to bring it to the attention of us mere mortals. His music is not necessarily always easy to listen to, but it is always fulfilling, both intellectually and spiritually. Add in his iconic hirsute look, his famously eccentric persona and his playful self-mythologising, and it’s all led Brazilians to embrace him with many nicknames, chief among them O Bruxo – The Wizard.

In a country and culture so large and steeped in musical heritage as Brazil, it takes someone very special to be able to rise above the crowd with a distinctive, individual sound. It is for his extraordinary and uncompromising artistic vision as a musician and composer; for the breathtaking quality and sheer quantity of his recorded and live output over a 74-year career; and for influencing and inspiring generations of world-jazz explorers in Brazil and the world over, that we are delighted that Hermeto Pascoal is the WOMEX 24 Artist Award recipient.


Photo: Hermeto Pascoal and his band The Mothership, by Gabriel Quintão.

Press release: Dogo du Togo & The Alagaa Beat Band - Avoudé

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

Dogo du Togo & The Alagaa Beat Band
Avoudé
We Are Busy Bodies (30 mins)

Following on from his self-titled 2002 debut, Togolese singer and guitarist Dogo du Togo introduces his new Lomé-based Alagaa Beat Band with the album Avoudé, released on 8th November 2024 on Canadian label We Are Busy Bodies. Recorded in less than 48 hours under the watchful eye of renowned engineer Patrick Jauneaud (Elton John, Kate Bush, Queen), Avoudé represents a new evolution of Togolese music and makes a powerful cultural statement: hard-hitting Afro-funk that builds upon the country’s musical traditions while creating a new sound to energise its future.

After two decades of living in the US and fronting the successful Afro-pop band Elikeh, Dogo saw the popularity of music from across West Africa – but Togo was never in that picture. Now splitting his time between Washington, DC and Togo’s capital Lomé, he set out to create a brand new beat that can put Togo on the musical map and that Togolese people can rally around and hold as their own: the alagaa beat.

Combining iconic rhythms of the Ewe and Mina people, such as kpanlogo, kinka and bobobo, alagaa blossoms from a complex interplay between drum kit and rhythm guitar, with a distinctive double snare hit and a guitar part based on the traditional gankogui bell pattern. Alagaa means ‘trance’ in Ewe, “because when you listen to this music,” says Dogo, “if you don't get in trance, then something’s wrong with you! The alagaa beat brings the energy right away. As soon as you bring it in, it just feels different, it takes you somewhere else.” The melodies, too, are anchored in Togo’s cultural history, using unique pentatonic scales known as mina or mami, derived from the music of the local Vodún religion and traditions that permeate everyday life in Togo.



For this album, Dogo du Togo has gone back to his roots. The Alagaa Beat Band is a reunion of friends who grew up playing music together on the streets of Lomé in the 1990s – lead guitarist Oya Yao was the one who taught Dogo to play in the very first place. Although alagaa is born from the guitar and drums, the sound is bolstered by a powerful horn section, beautiful retro synths and the unusual but inspired addition of the electric violin. Like many West African pop styles, it has elements of funk, rock, soul and reggae, but these are used only in service of the alagaa, and demonstrate the adaptability and flexibility of this exciting new style.

The whole album was recorded live in less than two days at Lomé’s legendary Otodi Studios, with storied engineer Patrick Jauneaud behind the desk. It was far from comfortable, but the vibe was immaculate: “The studio was built by Americans in the 70s. It used to have AC built in, but it's not working anymore. There's no windows, nothing. And it was hot when we were recording, it was HOT, and it was really painful. But the thing is – the sound of that studio is so great. The acoustic is so great that we decided to do it anyway. Those are the conditions: we’re hot, we’re extremely tired, we have only 48 hours. But we hit it, and played live.”

The album’s opener and title track ‘Avoudé’ is what Dogo describes as “alagaa par excellence.” That’s the beat, all the way through, no messing about – a way to kick down the doors and get the energy flowing immediately. The song encourages its listeners to work hard and strive for the life they want: “Nothing is easy. Life is not a game, it is a hustle.” The song ‘Enouwo Lagnon’ continues that theme, taking the voice of a person who knows, no matter how hard things get, they can always make things better through hope, prayer and struggle, the lyrics punctuated to a pair of barnstorming solos on trumpet and synth. ‘Adzé Adzé’ is the only song on the album that doesn’t use the alagaa beat. Instead it’s based on the limping 12/8 agbadza rhythm – a martial beat, originally used to celebrate victorious warriors. It makes sense that this is also the most political song on the album, urging the youth of Africa to create a bright future for the continent and to refuse to allow their countries to become puppets of Western governments.

With Avoudé, Dogo du Togo & The Alagaa Beat Band make a sound that is undeniably Togolese, steeped in the history of the country while making a contemporary sound that lights the way for exciting future directions. Get ready to be entranced by the alagaa beat – there’s a new style on Africa’s musical map.


Photo: Dogo du Togo & The Alagaa Beat Band, by Wilfried Good Eyes.

BCUC - WOMEX 23 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2023 delegate guide.



Based in Soweto, Johannesburg, Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness (BCUC for short) don’t limit themselves to the music of any single culture group. They epitomise the plurality of South Africa: their music reflects all the people around them, and they sing in all eleven of the country’s official languages. And from that, they make a big, big sound. Drums, percussion, bass guitar, whistles, horns and vocals – it all combines into a powerful driving force that becomes unstoppable. Their explosive live energy takes influence from hip-hop, rock, funk, gospel and Afrobeat, but also indigenous spiritual practices and magic. It’s no wonder they’re firm festival favourites across the globe.

With their all-embracing musical philosophy, BCUC are inherently political. Their songs are shot through with political messages and lessons. They hold high their values and social responsibilities, while being unafraid to criticise the wrongs around them. Like their music, their political perspective is uniquely South African while sharing a solidarity that encompasses the African continent and world as a whole. Even their organisation is utopian – the seven-piece collective is leaderless, each member contributing equally to the passion of the music.

BCUC represent the roots, trunk and branches of South African traditional music. This is cultural preservation in a way that isn’t frozen in time like a museum, but in a way that is living and breathing and growing and dancing. For their dedication to their music, their people and their country; for embodying the strength, unity and progress of their band name; and for their sheer ability to raise any roof, it is with pleasure that BCUC are the recipients of the WOMEX 23 Artist Award.


Photo: BCUC perform at WOMEX 23, by Jacob Crawfurd

Press release: Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers - Somanti

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

Chouk Bwa & The Ångströmers
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.

Obituary: Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru (1923-2023)

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 188, June 2023.



It’s a rare and beautiful thing to experience an artist whose work is utterly their own, that defies easy comparison or categorisation; to listen to music that one can only meaningfully describe using abstract, effusive terms. That is the music that Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru made when she sat down at her piano.

Her music is a unique style of Ethiopian pianism. It contains depths. The elegant cascades of her piano’s keys call forth memories, histories, influences: Beethoven, Debussy, Art Tatum, Satie, Chopin, Scott Joplin, courtly waltzes, Ethiopian Orthodox chants and folk melodies, the dignified hymns of the giant begena lyre, life’s hardships and joys, her beloved family members, her deep spirituality, her compassion. Her pieces don’t flourish in virtuosity, but precision; masterworks of chiaroscuro, they offer comfort, suspense and surprise. Languid rubato and unexpected turnarounds of tonality make her music drift and flow like heavy frankincense smoke, or a tide, or a waterfall. There is no separating composition from performance, as they are both hers alone.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam’s life story is just as astonishing. Born Yewubdar Gebru into an important political family in Addis Ababa in 1923, she had a whirlwind of an early life, with time as a schoolgirl in Switzerland, a prisoner-of-war in Italy, and a scholar of European classical violin and piano in Egypt. A promising career beckoned, but Yewubdar’s musical life was abruptly halted when Emperor Selassie refused her permission to continue her studies in England. After falling into depression and illness, faith guided her to sneak away to a monastery in the countryside. By the time she was 25, Yewubdar had become a nun of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, taking the title of Emahoy and changing her name to Tsege-Mariam.



It was after taking the veil that she created her singular musical style and composed most of her 150-plus works. But the music has always been just one thread in her life’s work of charity. Upon witnessing the homelessness of young people studying at her church, she dedicated herself to the poor and needy. Whenever she recorded her compositions and released albums, she made sure that all the proceeds went directly to orphanages. After several years of working for the Orthodox church in Jerusalem, Tsege-Mariam eventually moved to the Holy City for good in 1984. Living a semi-hermetic life in a monastery, she continued to help the poor in Israel and Ethiopia, continuing to practice piano daily.

It was in these later years that her music started to get the reach and attention it deserved, spearheaded by a compilation of her older recordings as Éthiopiques, Vol. 21 in 2006. The album was a revelation, and gained her fans around the world. Her compositions have been used in various film soundtracks, a documentary about her own life is currently in production, and two more albums of her work are set to be released in 2023 – with all proceeds, as ever, to those in need.

Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru died months short of her 100th birthday. In a review of her latest album, Jerusalem, I wrote that ‘Emahoy Tsege-Mariam is a living musical treasure.’ She may no longer be with us, but the treasure of her music will live for a long time to come.


Photo by kind permission of the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation.

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.

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.

My Instrument: Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe and their Embaire

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 178, June 2022.



There’s a worn-out cliché of a proverb that says ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’ In the Ugandan kingdom of Busoga, it takes a village to play a xylophone. The instrument is the embaire, and the village of Nakibembe is world-renowned for its musicians’ prowess.

The embaire is huge. It is three metres long, and its 21 keys are played by six musicians, who sit three per side. Each musician plays a relatively simple repeating pattern across three or four keys, but multiplied six-fold they create an intense battery of ever-evolving interlocking sonic shapes. From this dense tangle of sound, distinct melodies, basslines and drum rhythms emerge, each musician’s abstract part combining into an entrancing whole. “It’s a bit like jazz,” explains Nassar Kinobe, the singer and bass-keys-specialist in the Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe. “Everyone is playing a different thing, but there is always a connection between them. And there are things we can’t explain, it’s like magic. When we start playing, there is momentum. Anything can change and become a perfect part of a pattern, even if it’s an accident!”

The instrument itself is a feat of carpentry. The keys of the embaire are made from the wood of the omusambya (Markhamia lutea or Nile tulip), and its beaters are made from the wood of the nzo (Teclea nobilis). The omusambya wood is carefully hewn with a special axe-chisel called the eyiga; the tuning is incredibly precise – each small chip of a giant key is an irreparable alteration – and measured entirely by ear.

When played in the villages of Busoga, the keys are laid on banana stems and placed over a 50cm-deep pit dug into the ground. This trough provides a booming resonance that enhances the instrument’s bass keys, connecting the embaire to the land of its ancestors in a very literal way. It also makes it a challenge to set up on a stage – the concept of transporting a hole is a bit of an ontological head-scratcher. But with multiple international appearances under their belt, the Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe have found a way around that challenge. Each time they travel abroad, a specially-built box is commissioned to stand in for the earthen pit. The original keys from Nakibembe are then placed upon the new resonator, creating a hybrid instrument: half-Soga, half-international.



The Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe don’t just carry the name of their village out of sentimentality; the group is interwoven with the community itself. They are more than six musicians. In fact, they’re more like a football team. They have their ‘starting line-up,’ who are usually the ones who tour abroad, but there are many other players in the troupe who can sub in whenever necessary – the village even has a youth ensemble for the trainees.

Arising in the 1970s, the giant 21-keyed version of the embaire is a fairly modern innovation on an ancient instrument, but it’s already a valuable tradition in Nakibembe. “It’s become something big, and we want to keep it going,” says Rashidi Ngobi. Affectionately referred to as ‘the old man’ by the rest of the musicians, Ngobi is the troupe’s elder, and the one who holds the embaire’s history. “If we teach people, and then they teach people, then it lives on because our ancestors did the same thing. My job is to inspire the young generation and to make sure that I leave something for them. When they have children, they should teach them the same thing and keep the legacy going.”

Behind the intricate melodies and rhythms interlaced into a complex cacophony lies a simple truth: “The embaire was created to help take away sorrow, to bring joy, and to make people forget their suffering. Its history is about people coming together and creating something for a cause,” says Ngobi. With an instrument this big, it really does take a village to play the embaire.


Photos, from top: Nakibembe Xylophone Troupe live at CTM Festival 2020, by Stefanie Kulisch; the keys of the Nakibembe embaire.

Cabralista Collectives: Dispatch from Porto, Portugal

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 177, May 2022.



Two artists performing in the same city, on the same night, in different venues, making very different music but with the same totemic figure in their hearts.

Bandé-Gamboa and Scúru Fitchádu were both in Porto in October, invited in front of the assembled world music industry as part of WOMEX 21. Bandé-Gamboa is a project fusing Cape Verdean funaná and Bissau-Guinean gumbé in a modern take on the classic dance-band format; Scúru Fitchádu also uses funaná, but takes it into the loud, aggressive and hyperactive world of punk, metal and electronica. Both hold a common core – the work of Amílcar Cabral.

Cabral was one of the great African revolutionaries, an anti-colonial thinker and a noted poet. In organising against the colonial power of Portugal, his dream was to unite Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde into one nation of differing but complementary halves. He was assassinated in 1973, but the independence movement he spearheaded continued in earnest. Within three years, both countries had won their freedom from Portugal – albeit as two separate, independent nations. Cabral remains a crucial figure and cultural touchstone within those countries and across the continent.

Scúru Fitchádu is the solo project of Marcus Veiga. Born in Lisbon to Cape Verdean and Angolan parents, Veiga grew up hearing the wisdom of Cabral. “The entire narrative involving Cabral was recurrent whenever there was talk of the colonial war and independence,” he says. “As a teenager, I didn't pay much attention, but when I started to wake up to conscious hip-hop and punk, I started to research revolutionary movements. It was from there that everything became clearer: Amílcar Cabral was a major figure in the struggle for the independence of the African people. He played an important role in ending the colonial power.” It was those awakenings that allowed Veiga to explore his own roots, musically and politically. Funaná is party music – based around fast-paced accordion and iron scraper – but it’s also a symbol of resistance. It reflects the blues of everyday people and was banned under colonial rule. With Veiga’s unique mix of powerful, punky, political party music, it was unquestionable that Cabralista philosophies would be at the centre: “The whole combative attitude directly draws on the liberation movements of Amílcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon and the Black Panther Party. I was born and live in the country that colonised, humiliated, kidnapped, raped and murdered my ancestors. I always try to establish a parallel between African guerrilla decolonisation movements and the present day, by writing verses or using samples that elaborate ideas of physical and mental colonial liberation. Here lies my manifesto. It opened doors for the way I make my art, and gave me ethical principles for how I live my life. Similar to so many others who have Cabral as a reference, we find guidelines for good conduct in his work as a strategist, writer and poet.”



Cabral’s post-colonial vision also inspired the founding of Bandé-Gamboa. The project started as an album by two all-star bands: one from Guinea-Bissau on Side A, one from Cape Verde on Side B – a reflection of Cabral’s ambition of the two countries united. The album was released in 2020, and the project has since evolved further, joining the two bands into one for live performances. Bandé-Gamboa was the brainchild of Portuguese producer Francisco ‘Fininho’ Sousa, who explains how the figure of Cabral is central to his work: “Cabral did not intend to dilute Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau into one identity; he celebrated the diversity and difference between the countries. We do the same. This project aims to respect the culture, but refuses to look at culture as static. It always evolves. That’s where Cabral comes in. He said that revolution was a cultural act. We place the future of the music in the hands of the most talented musicians, exactly where it should be.”

Fundamental to both Veiga’s and Sousa’s musical messages is the erasure of African struggles within the histories and education of Europeans. Scúru Fitchádu and Bandé-Gamboa are taking over where schools in Portugal are failing, by bringing Cabral and his teachings to wider attention, and with it broader topics of African liberation and anti-colonialism. “The narrative that was given to me in schoolbooks showed the Portuguese Empire as a sophisticated and benevolent coloniser of the wild, limited, disposable Africans,” says Veiga. “That story is still told in schoolbooks and Portuguese civil society today.” And Sousa notes that that vitriol extends to Cabral himself: “The difference between what I had been told his ideas were – shallow revolutionary rants – and what they turned out to be – beautifully written, innovative, deep humanist ideas – is a measure of the cultural bubble us Europeans live in. We are born in an epistemic prison. In many ways, he liberated me.”

Bandé-Gamboa and Scúru Fitchádu make very different music, but bring their audiences into the same anti-colonial collective. On a Saturday night in October, Porto – once one of the most important cities of the Portuguese Empire – was rocking to the message of the hero Amílcar Cabral.


Photos: Scúru Fitchádu live at WOMEX 21, by Yannis Psathas; Bandé-Gamboa, by Patricia Pascal.

Aynur - WOMEX 21 Artist Award

First published in the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2021 delegate guide.



As both a Kurd and an Alevi, Aynur Doğan’s cultural heritage has always been subject to discriminatory laws and public persecution, whether in the small mountain town of Çemişgezek where she grew up, or the metropolis of Istanbul. With her music, however, singer and bağlama player Doğan – now usually known simply as Aynur – creates space for her identities and for those that share them.

At its core, Aynur’s music is based on Kurdish folk songs. Her voice – in turns bold and powerful or delicate, almost fragile – always holds the 300-year-old melodies in tender embrace. She carries these songs as a caretaker and a friend. She preserves the Kurdish and Alevi songs against those that would have them silenced, but at the same time, those songs give her the strength to continue as a commanding voice in support of those cultures.

Tradition doesn’t restrict Aynur’s music, though. Her own style blends the Anatolian and the Western, and collaborations with world-class musicians from many fields (including Yo-Yo Ma, Kayhan Kalhor, Mercan Dede and Javier Limón) have led to a passionate, international fanbase. Her accessible music allows her to spread her words far and wide.

Her popularity and outspoken nature have made Aynur the target of right-wing and anti-Kurd groups in Turkey. Her shows became marred by disruptions, leading her to move her base to Amsterdam in 2012. This has not dampened her fire: the most recent of her seven albums, 2020’s Hedûr, went to #1 on the world music charts and has led to a concert in Carnegie Hall (understandably postponed for now).

It is for her long-term dedication to the preservation and innovation of Kurdish and Alevi culture and for maintaining the highest artistic integrity even in the face of political pressure that Aynur is a very worthy recipient of the WOMEX 21 Artist Award.


Photo: Aynur receives the WOMEX 21 Artist Award, by Eric van Nieuwland.

Introducing Dongyang Gozupa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 172, November 2021.



At its best, the power trio is one of music’s most elegant and well-balanced ensembles. Each aspect of the trio leans on the others while pulling equal weight, filling the sonic space without any extraneous elements. Seoul-based Dongyang Gozupa are a perfect example – even if their set-up turns the standard power trio on its head.

Dongyang Gozupa are Jang Dohyuk on a personalised drum-and-percussion kit, Ham Minhwi on bass guitar and Yun Eunhwa on yanggeum, the Korean hammered zither. Importantly, the group doesn’t orbit around a singer. This removes the focal point of the listener’s attention, and serves to highlight the equal importance of each musician. Their full message is delivered through instrumental sound. “When one conveys an emotion, such as loneliness, joy, love, or even rage, there are times when one cannot express that emotion in a word or phrase,” they state. “Through our performances, we try to create an emotional narrative that connects with as many people as possible.”

While they paint with emotions, their musical style itself defies easy explanation. They don’t anchor their music around any particular genre, but draw from many streams. For Jang, genres aren’t the point: “Rather than wanting to create something that the world has never heard before, we just want to create something fun which incorporates the tastes and references of each band member.” This includes elements of prog-rock and gugak (traditional Korean music) with hints of metal and industrial, all tinged with the avant-garde, making a sound that can be dark and dissonant while retaining a certain playfulness: it avoids any over-seriousness and makes dancing inevitable.

It’s those spicy dissonances that give Dongyang Gozupa their signature sound. Those moments of discomfort are not something they shy away from, but rather embrace as a fundamental part of the sonic environment, a necessary tension to balance the consonance. “Personally, I don’t think that dissonance is something wrong,” says Ham. “This all-or-nothing, right-or-wrong thinking makes creative vision very narrow. It’s the same with dissonance. If a note does not fit in a particular place, repeating that note can create a special kind of psychedelic effect.” And that can take a piece to a different place entirely.

The group’s identity and philosophy can be seen in microcosm in Yun’s yanggeum; it is rooted in tradition without being bound to it. Her instrument was specially-made – it literally has her name on it: “I wanted to express myself with a yanggeum that was a little more spectacular and dynamic.” To that end, hers has many more strings than smaller gugak version, giving her access to a much wider range of both tone and style. Yun also plays with two sticks instead of the traditional one, and uses a variety of effects pedals to alter the sound when appropriate. Spectacular and dynamic – adjectives that extend to the whole group.

The past decade has seen a truly electrifying new wave of artists using Korean folk and classical music to discover new directions and meanings in sound – think Jambinai, Black String – and Dongyang Gozupa can surely claim their place among them: a perfectly-weighted power trio with an intricately balanced sound.


Photo: Yun Eunhwa, Jang Dohyuk and Ham Minhwi of Dongyang Gozupa.

My Instrument: Aga Ujma and her Sasando

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 171, October 2021.



The sasando is a rare instrument. It hails from the small Indonesian island of Rote, but it’s little-heard within Indonesia, and almost entirely unknown internationally. Although it looks a little like a short, squat harp, the sasando is a tube zither, its strings arranged in a full circle around a thick bamboo stem. In fact, it’s remarkably similar in sight and sound to its not-so-distant Austronesian cousin, the valiha from Madagascar.

The sasando’s most striking feature, however – and what sets it apart from its relatives – is the giant sail that is attached to both ends of its body, giving it a distinctly maritime feel. This sail is made from the leaves of the lontar palm, and serves the function of a soundbox – the space between the parabolic sail and the strings amplifies the sound, as well as bouncing it back to the musician (very useful when some of the strings are not visible behind the bamboo tube).

Polish musician Aga Ujma was a student at the Surakarta Institute of Arts in Indonesia when she first came across the sasando while at a music festival on Bokor island. She fell in love. “When I saw the sasando on stage for the first time, I was so mesmerised by how it looked, even before I heard it,” Ujma says. “But I really loved the sound and I was so lucky, I was staying at the same hostel as the musician, Ganzer Lana. He’s the main sasando guy in Indonesia, and he became my teacher.” She spent her final months in Indonesia studying under Lana, who crafted for Ujma her very own sasando, complete with specific innovations to allow for easy touring. It uses transducers to enable amplification, and can be mounted on a stand to be played sitting on a chair rather than – as traditional – on the floor. Even the sail has been modernised: “For most sasandos, it is always open. But mine folds up. This is a new invention that it folds, to make it easier to transport.” How many other musicians can say their instrument has a giant, telescopic sail?

The sasando has existed on Rote since at least the seventh century. At that time it only had five or eight strings, made from the bamboo stem’s skin, but it now has 32, made of wound metal. Having never played an instrument like it, it took some time for Ujma to become accustomed to the sasando. “It was very painful! Sometimes you play an instrument and you just don’t get it. Every person learns in a different way, but it was so difficult for me. You basically play four different things with two hands.” Around the 360° of strings, the musician plucks a bass pattern with their left fingers, chords with their right fingers and the melody with their thumbs. “My education as a classical pianist was actually really helpful, because it reminded me a lot of playing Bach’s fugues. You have to control so many melodies with just two hands, and that’s the same with sasando.”

Now based in London, Ujma’s music has gone from strength to strength, with Indonesian music playing a vital part. On her 2021 debut EP, Songs of Innocence and Experience, she shows off an undefinable alt-folk with distinct echoes of Björk and Joanna Newsom, and an intimate connection to the sounds of the sasando. As the zither doesn’t use the standard European equal-temperament tuning system, it lends Ujma’s melodies a shimmering, mystical quality.

For an instrument with such a unique construction, an ancient past and a beautiful, unearthly sound, it is tragic that the sasando is so little recognised outside of its own small island. But with the work of Ganzer Lana in Indonesia and Aga Ujma in Europe, more and more people are getting the opportunity to discover it for themselves – from Rote to the world.


Photo: Aga Ujma plays the sasando at the Serpentine Gallery, by Holly Whitaker.

Breaking the Teeth of the Lion: Stella Chiweshe

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 166, April 2021.



Stella Chiweshe is 74 years old. She’s travelled the world, starred in films, been a cultural ambassador for Zimbabwe, and much more besides. She follows the voices of spirits and she defied social taboo and colonial laws to become one of the first female professional mbira players. She has a lot of stories to tell.

A typically magical story is the first time she performed with European musicians – members of the British group 3 Mustaphas 3 – while recording in Berlin. The Mustaphas were understandably nervous ahead of their first encounter with Chiweshe. But she wasn’t worried. She’d met them before. “Yes, it was my first time meeting them physically,” she grins, “but in my sleep, when I was dreaming, I had played with them for a long time before. When we finally met, it was like flipping a switch. They got the music right in a very short time. They were all so surprised, but I was just laughing!”

Those recordings became the album Ambuya?, released on Piranha Records in 1987. Now, 33⅓ years later, Piranha have issued the album as a shiny new remaster, giving Chiweshe – and us – a great opportunity to look back on her legacy, and to explore ways to make sure it lives on. Ambuya? marked firsts on many fronts – her first album, first international release, the first time recording her signature sound of mbira and two marimbas – but the story of spiritual guidance helping her on the way to becoming the Queen of Mbira is one that occurs again and again throughout her life. To even make it to the Berlin studio was a triumph.

The mbira is a powerful instrument. It is a symbol of the Shona people and an important part of their traditional worship. When played, especially during bira ceremonies, it conjures spirits of the ancestors for possession, intercession and protection. When Chiweshe was first called to the mbira, Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia, and neither the racist settler-colonialist government nor the Christian church could allow such dangerous tools in the hands of the people. The mbira, along with all traditional elements of Shona culture, was banned.

“But if it is something that is in the blood and the veins of the people, it is not possible to completely remove it,” says Chiweshe, the twinkle in her eye almost audible. “We did not stop playing mbira in the communal lands, we didn’t!” Instruments were transported under the cover of darkness and bira were held way out in the countryside, away from the ears of police and clergy. Amid this secretive resistance of cultural continuation, though, Chiweshe still faced additional barriers. The mbira was a man’s domain; the idea of a woman playing the instrument was scandalous.

But Stella Rambisai Chiweshe has always been strong-willed – and she was chosen. The spirit of her sixth-great-grandfather put the mbira in her mind and an ache in her soul. Mbira was all she could think about for two years until she made it her mission to learn when she was 16 years old. It wasn’t easy. Every teacher refused her. When she asked her grandfather why no-one would teach a girl, he told her that no man would want a wife that played mbira. “And you know how I took it? It made me laugh! ‘Really? Is that all?!’ I couldn’t believe it!” To her surprise, her grandfather directed her to her great-uncle. This was her last hope.

“When I got there, it took me three days to ask. I saw him come out, sit down and start to play. I walked towards him as if I was walking on eggs! I went up to him and said, ‘excuse me, can you please show me how to play?’ He looked at me, and his eyes went into my chest where I had pain for two years. His eyes touched my pain. He said ‘sit down, I will teach you how to play,’ and even before I sat down, the pain just vanished. I’d heard a voice talking into my ear, telling me that the remedy was to play mbira. It gave me courage to ignore everyone. I ignored men, I ignored women, I ignored the government, I ignored the church, because I wanted to survive. That’s how I started to play.”

With the mbira in her hands, Chiweshe not only survived, she thrived. After three years of study, she began to play at the forbidden bira ceremonies with the threat of imprisonment if caught. She also performed in secular contexts, forming her own band and recording 20 singles. In 1981, she became a member of the newly-independent Zimbabwe’s National Dance Company, where her skills as an mbira player were celebrated on the world stage rather than hidden out of sight; she even played the titular role in the film Ambuya Nehanda, a medium, martyr and Zimbabwean hero. After moving to Germany in the 1980s, her international career blossomed. She’s released many albums, recorded two Peel Sessions and toured the world, including playing mbira – solo – to more than 10,000 people at WOMAD USA in 1994.



And through all of this success, she has been guided by the voices of her ancestors. The spirits are incredibly significant to Chiweshe. They advise her, inhabit her dreams, give her visions, bring new songs to her fingers and voice and, yes, introduce her to future band members. Once she moved to Germany, she brought the ancestors with her: “Ancestors are spirits, and this is my culture; my culture is in me and my spirits are in me! They are not living people who I have left behind in Zimbabwe. It is a spiritual world, it is everywhere.”

As much as Chiweshe’s music delights her fans, it becomes clear when she speaks that, for her, it is the spirituality of the music that remains of the utmost importance. When she plays her hypnotic, circular patterns, it is to entertain the ancestral spirits as well as to allow these spirits to communicate with her audience. Sometimes, the spirits take charge, altering her mind to create amazing things: “Once I was playing and I started to see the mbira as the head of a lion, the keys were the teeth of the lion. There was no way to escape, so the only thing I could do was to break the teeth of the lion. It happened for a long time that I was fighting with the lion, breaking its teeth. Afterwards, people were looking at me and I was wondering what was happening when I was breaking the teeth!”

The ancestors tether Chiweshe’s work to her roots, and provide a common thread throughout her life: chivanhu, Shona tradition. Whether carrying the ancient traditions in her soul, radically updating and reinventing them on record and on stage or showcasing them abroad, the concept of chivanhu has always been at the core. That’s why Chiweshe’s largest and on-going project is the Chivanhu Centre.

The Chivanhu Centre is Chiweshe’s way of continuing her commitment to Zimbabwe’s traditions and culture while she’s in Germany, and for long after she joins the pantheon of ancestors herself. Laid out like a village among the mountains north of Harare, the Centre will be a place for learning and living the tradition. It will function as both a school and a community; people can come to learn to play mbira or hosho (rattles), or learn to sing or dance – they can even learn how to make traditional beer, doro, a vital component in bira ceremonies. And it’s open for everybody: “All the experience that I get through my travels with music, I would like to share it with the youth, with schoolchildren and with older people, to give back what I have experienced in my lifetime.”

Just as Chiweshe used her music to resist colonial rule as a teenager, the Chivanhu Centre carries on that fight. Shona culture has never fully recovered from those evils. “You know that since we were colonised for 100 years, for all that time our traditional music was oppressed,” she says. “People were not free to sing their traditional songs. Now, this place is somewhere that will help people to bring out what they have.” Rebellion is a lifestyle and Chiweshe knows that celebrating chivanhu as a community is radical.

It’s a big vision, but work is already underway. There are plans to build a borehole, a solar power system, a community hall, a specialised music room, several huts and a garden. Although a crowdfunding campaign fell short of its target at the end of 2020, the project continues undeterred. The Chivanhu Centre will be a beautiful castle and a testament to the life and work of Chiweshe and the Shona people.

When her first album was released in 1987, it was given the title Ambuya?. ‘Ambuya’ is the Shona word for grandmother, and is used as a title of respect for female elders. That original title represented a call to the ancestors, to the powerful women of the Shona people. With its 2021 reissue, the title has changed – it is now Ambuya! No more questions necessary. A studious caretaker of Shona heritage with over 50 years of mastery and innovation on the mbira, Ambuya Stella Chiweshe is the bearer of a great legacy. With the work of Chivanhu Centre, it’s a legacy that will continue for a long time.


Photos from top: Stella Chiweshe, by Camille Bokhobza; Stella Chiweshe and her new car in 1984, unknown.

My Instrument: Cätlin Mägi and her Parmupill

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 164, January/February 2021.



When most musicians play a concert, they usually stick to one instrument, maybe two or three if they’re multi-instrumentalists. When Cätlin Mägi takes to the stage, she brings no fewer than 50: all different versions of the Estonian parmupill.

The parmupill is a jaw harp: a metal tongue held in a steel frame that is plucked using the mouth as a soundbox. The instrument has existed in Estonia since at least the 13th century, and was once a staple accompaniment to folk dance parties. Over time, it was replaced by louder and more fashionable instruments such as the fiddle and accordion, and the traditional style of playing – where the player creates an overtone melody by changing the shape of their mouth and throat – was lost. Its death knell came during Soviet rule. “In Russian times, we couldn’t have our own traditional music,” Mägi explains. “They took it to the stages and they only played a small amount of tunes, so it changed. The village people didn’t play it because it just was not familiar to them anymore.” As the folk music and dances became standardised, so did the instrumentation, and the parmupill survived only as a novelty.

It was in Norway, during her time as an exchange student, that Mägi discovered a thriving jaw harp tradition. “The old players there knew how to get the clear melody from the jaw harp, so I studied with them. When I came back to Estonia I thought, maybe we had the same technique in our history? I went to the archives and suddenly there were 20 old recordings that had the same clarity of melody!” The most recent of those recordings was from 1938; that style of playing had not been heard in Estonia for more than half a century. Now, through her research as a scholar, her performances as a musician and her teaching as the head of folk music at the famous Viljandi Culture Academy, Mägi has pioneered the resurrection of this once lost technique. When it comes to the parmupill, she literally wrote the book: Eesti Parmupill / Estonian Jew’s Harp was published in 2011.

But why do her gigs involve 50 parmupills? Well, she doesn’t play them all individually. Using specialised clamps, she stacks several instruments together to create ‘courses.’ Each parmupill in a course twangs a different note, and she can easily swap between them as she plays. That way, she changes the pitch of the drone as well as the overtone harmonics, meaning that she can play a bassline and a melody simultaneously. “When I make my music, I have to have exactly the right pitches ready for every tune. I can’t make a course during a concert, it takes too much time, so I can’t just have one harp for each note. I have 20 ‘A’ harps at home because I have to spread them out – that’s why I have so many!”

When she performs, Mägi’s 50 parmupills are transformed into more than just metallic twangs and whistling overtones. Their traditional West Estonian repertoire is glitched and warped through electronics: distortions, echoes, delays and loops turn their sound into a vast monster machine – and it helps that jaw harps already sound inherently electronic. Most impressive is the octave pedal, which turns the reediness of the parmupill into a rumbling, powerful bass over which folk songs and melodies can play.

Mägi is not content with reviving the techniques of playing the instrument, she’s making new methods and contexts for the parmupill to flourish in modern musical spheres. EDM, contemporary jazz and traditional folk music; state-of-the-art gadgetry and 50 ancient instruments coming together as one. A wondrous collaboration of old and new made from just two pieces of twisted metal.


Photo: Cätlin Mägi live at WOMEX 19, by Jacob Crawfurd.

Hossein Alizadeh and Rembrandt Trio - Same Self, Same Silence - Liner Notes

First published as liner notes to Hossein Alizadeh and Rembrandt Trio’s album Same Self, Same Silence (Just Listen Records, 2020).



These are sounds of the ancient and the modern.

Echoes of jazz solidify among the chromatics of the dastgāh, adorned by ornaments both Persian and Baroque.

Musical instruments that were nearly lost to history resonate with those that are the first of their kind.

The art music of three continents swirl together as sweet-scented vapour and become one.

Hossein Alizadeh

Few musicians in contemporary Iran are as respected as Hossein Alizadeh. He is the leading master of Persian lutes: the tar (the hourglass-shaped lute), the setar (a long-necked lute with variants across Central Asia and the Middle East), and, as you can hear on Same Self, Same Silence, the shurangiz, an instrument built to his own specifications that serves as a midpoint between the two.

Born in Tehran in 1950 to mixed Persian-Azeri parentage, Alizadeh quickly became immersed in the tradition of musiqi-e assil – the classical music of Iran that can be traced back many centuries. He became a professional musician aged just 15, and was soon noted for his powerful yet delicate performance style and his virtuosity in improvisation within the classical structures.

Aside from strict interpretations of classical and traditional music, Alizadeh has also been at the forefront of innovative music in Iran, and has expanded the possibilities of what is thinkable within the realms of Persian music. He has been particularly celebrated as a composer, with notable works including a concerto for ney (end-blown reed flute) and string orchestra entitled NayNava (1983) and scores for the films Gabbeh (1996) and Turtles Can Fly (2004).

Hossein Alizadeh is without a doubt one of the most important figures in the field of art music in Iran and beyond – as an educator, as a composer, as an exponent of old traditions and new talent and, foremost, as a true master in his performance of Persian classical music.

Rembrandt Trio

The Rembrandt Trio, from the Netherlands, are masters of their own classical traditions. At first glance, they appear to have the set-up of a standard jazz piano trio – piano, double bass and drums. But look closer. Rembrandt Frerichs’ piano is actually a fortepiano, built to the specifications of Mozart’s own instrument from 1790, or else an antique harmonium, bridging the gap between Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Tony Overwater’s double bass is a violone, a bass viol with six strings and frets. Vinsent Planjer’s drums are a whisper kit, a unique personal curation of drums and percussion from across time and geography.

Fine jazz players each, but together, their music represents a journey to a different sound. When they play together, influences abound and their historical instruments reflect an alternative vision of contemporary jazz. They edge towards the unattainable third stream, blurring European classical and jazz styles to render both nearly meaningless. J.S. Bach, Keith Jarrett, Claude Debussy, Ornette Coleman: these legacies are inextricable in the music of the Rembrandt Trio.

And their boundaries don’t stop at jazz or European art music. The strings of Frerichs’ fortepiano connect their player not only with 18th century Vienna, but also with the players of the Arabic qanun (plucked zither) and the Persian and Hindustani santur (hammered dulcimer). The music of the Middle East becomes integral to the trio’s sound, whether through the strains of an Arabic maqam scale, a suggestion of an iqa’ rhythm, or through direct work with celebrated Iranian artists such as Kayhan Kalhor, Mahsa Vahdat… and Hossain Alizadeh.

The music

Together, Hossein Alizadeh, Rembrandt Frerichs, Tony Overwater and Vinsent Planjer represent three art music traditions – Persian, European and jazz – and make from them a unified creation.

Same Self, Same Silence is an exploration of Nava, one of the seven principle dastgāhs – or modal systems – in Persian classical music. A dastgāh is defined by a particular set of notes, and so each has its own distinct emotional colour and personality. Nava is one of the oldest in the dastgāh system, known for its serenity and the meditative qualities it imbues. Yet, it remains among the least performed in the Persian repertoire.

Each piece here uses Nava as its base, anchoring the music solidly in the classical tradition. Most of the pieces are based on gushehs, short canonical melodic fragments upon which ideas can take flight; others are specially composed by Alizadeh; and still others are solo improvisations on the dastgāh from Alizadeh and Frerichs.

The serenity embodied by Nava can also be heard in the performances themselves. Alizadeh and the Rembrandt Trio first met in 2016, and performed together for the first time that same year at the November Music festival in ’s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. When recording this album, Alizadeh said “I’ve known these guys for a year now and I already feel we have known each other for fifty years, because we have grown so close musically so fast.” This collaborative closeness gives the ensemble a relaxed enjoyment that can be heard clearly in the music, a feeling that only adds to the emotional depth on display.

To make Same Self, Same Silence, each musician has adapted their playing to the others’. Musical minds are tuned to each other’s thinking, and musical instruments are re-tuned to ring in sympathy with another culture – Nava is a dastgāh that requires the use of quarter-tones not usually found in European music. This reorientation allows each musician to approach on an equal footing, to build new sonic possibilities. “When we start to play,” says Alizadeh, “we become like sculptors who create a shape on stage and, bit by bit, we carve out a sculpture.”

Where else could this music be heard than the here-and-now? The jangling buzz of the shurangiz complements the dampened tones of the fortepiano; rhythms from Iran played on a whisper kit are elaborated on the violone; improvisations glide seamlessly between Asia, Europe and America. Classical music cultures from the far past meet in the present.

These are the sounds of the modern and the ancient.


Photo: Tony Overwater, Rembrandt Frerichs, Hossein Alizadeh and Vinsent Planjer, by Floris Scheplitz.

Mónika Lakatos - WOMEX 20 Artist Award

First published online as part of the WOMEX – World Music Expo 2020 Awards announcement.



When Mónika Lakatos was crowned the winner of the Hungarian TV talent show Ki Mit Tud? in 1996, she wasn’t blasting out pop covers to pre-recorded backing tracks. Instead, she sang the traditional music of her own community, the Olah Romani people. The strength and passion of her voice made her a stand-out performer, and the win provided her first big break. Thus began an impressive professional career, championing the people and culture of the Olah every step of the way.

Within Hungary, the Olah Romani are a minority of a minority, with only around 30,000 people still practicing their language and way of life. Mónika has her roots in Nagyecsed, a village famous for its music, at the heart of the Olah community in north-eastern Hungary. With music and songs all around her, she has been singing for as long as she can remember, allowing her to imbue her own work with heartfelt emotion.

Now the leader of prominent ensembles including The Gipsy Voices and Romengo, Mónika always keeps her family’s vast repertoire of lyrical hallgató and danceable pergető songs to the fore. Within a very traditional setting, she pushes boundaries, celebrating the voices and experiences of women in a society often focused on the masculine, and providing space for Romani youths to make themselves heard, too.

It is for her commitment to the Olah people and their music, for her mission to ensure that female Romani voices can be heard on the world stage and for her highest personal artistry as a performer that Mónika Lakatos is presented with the WOMEX 20 Artist Award.


Photo: Mónika Lakatos and this Gipsy Voices, by András Farkas.

A Life's Work: Ssewa Ssewa

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 161, October 2020.



Air travel can be a fraught experience for musicians. There are many heart-breaking stories of delicate and priceless instruments arriving at their destination in irreparable pieces. For Ugandan musician Ssewa Ssewa, though, a brush with customs officials eventually led to the invention of a whole new instrument and a determination to bring Uganda to the world stage.

James Ssewakiryanga Jr, known on stage as Ssewa Ssewa, was always going to be a musician. His childhood was filled with music: “It was easy for me to pick up music because that’s the kind of language that was around me in my growing days as a little boy. Everyone that came into my home was a musician.” The start of Ssewa Ssewa’s musical education came from his mother, a dancer, who made sure to teach her son the basics and sent him to attend music schools. It also helped that his father was a master of the engoma drums and an accomplice to the late Albert Ssempeke as he rebuilt the ancient royal music of the Buganda Kingdom after the fall of Idi Amin.

Starting off by playing the large communal xylophone, the amadinda, Ssewa Ssewa soon moved on to study the engoma with his father and then the adungu (bow-harp). “From then I kept on adding different instruments!” As he became a professional musician, Ssewa Ssewa’s music was rooted in the traditional. With the adungu as his instrument of choice, he began touring the world with various ensembles. But he was exasperated at how little Ugandan culture was known in Europe. People knew the West African kora but not the adungu; they knew the Zimbabwean mbira but not its Ugandan cousin, the akogo. This cultural ignorance came to a head in 2014, at Copenhagen airport, where he was stopped from boarding a plane to Switzerland. His prized adungu, which used large nails as tuning pegs, was labelled as a security risk and couldn’t be brought on board. It was a frustration, but Ssewa Ssewa was equal to it, and understanding: “The reality stands that if you’re going into a culture where they don’t know this kind of instrument, and they’re looking at sharp objects, at some point you’re going to have trouble having this instrument go through.” Nevertheless, it was a problem he didn’t want to encounter again.

Over the next few years, an idea took shape and solidified. He would create his own instrument that could become known both inside and outside Uganda, one that could be both modern and traditional at once, and one that could tour the world uninhibited by unfair hostility. Working together with carpenters Mubiru Deo and Steven Kibombo, Ssewa Ssewa created the janzi. Although based on the adungu, the janzi is clearly a modern invention. The adungu’s skin soundboard is replaced with polished wood; the nails replaced with mechanical tuning pegs. Where the adungu has one set of strings, the janzi has two. “We worked through different tunings and we ended up with two different scales,” Ssewa Ssewa explains. “The uniqueness of the instrument is that I tune a Western diatonic scale on my left and an African pentatonic scale on my right. I describe it as collaboration, because I am bringing worlds together.”

By using two different tunings, the janzi itself becomes a metaphor for Ssewa Ssewa’s music and his whole outlook on life. He can switch effortlessly between the Ugandan and the international, and create music that speaks to people, whatever culture they’re from. It’s also reflected in the name: janzi comes from ‘ejanzi’, the Luganda word for grasshopper, an insect that flies from one place to another with ease. The imagery spoke to Ssewa Ssewa so strongly that he’s built his life around it: it’s the name of his instrument, his band, his recording studio, his charity (helping children with disabilities through music) and his youngest daughter. Janzi is his life’s work.

Ssewa Ssewa’s first worldwide release is a perfect representation of the Ugandan and the international. Nva K’la means ‘From Kampala,’ and it’s a love letter to the sounds of his home city. Kampala is a hub, attracting people from all over the country, each bringing with them their own rich musical heritage. When he plays, Ssewa Ssewa is making the music of the whole of Uganda, not just one set of people. “I want to explain through my music that if you come to Uganda, you’re going to listen to different kinds of sound. We have so many cultures here, and every culture has their own sound, their own style of playing music. When you come to Kampala you feel it, you feel and hear all those different cultures.” Nva K’la reflects that metropolitan hustle and bustle. Starting with the popular baksimba dance rhythm, he adds influences from many different traditional musics from Uganda and overlays them with modern sounds from the local and the global, including soul and reggae. Traditional instruments such as the adungu, akogo, endingidi (one-string fiddle), endongo (lyre), amadinda and engoma sit alongside a legion of guitars, basses and keyboards, all brought together and mediated by the new-traditional janzi. This is how Ssewa Ssewa wants people to think of Ugandan music: as an exciting plurality, a range of music spanning from the centuries-old to the freshly-made-this-morning but that could only come from one place. He wants to stoke pride in the Ugandan nation, where all its people, with their many cultures, can contribute to a united identity to share with the world.

At their core, however, the reasons for his innovations stem from European ignorance: ignorance of customs officials about the make-up and meaning of an ancient instrument, ignorance of the music-listening public about Ugandan music as its own, identifiable culture. It should shame us that this collective ignorance has led musicians to feel the need to create entirely new instruments and ways of playing just to get heard. But necessity is the mother of invention, and Ssewa Ssewa’s ambitions and achievements are important, potentially long-lasting, and very danceable. Stay tuned to hear more Ugandan music in the future, under Ssewa Ssewa’s watch: “I want to lead audiences to take note of our sounds from Uganda. We have so much talent here that the world has not seen. ”


Photo: Ssewa Ssewa and his janzi, by Walter Keys.

My Instrument: Pekko Käppi and his Jouhikko

First published in Songlines Magazine issue 161, October 2020.



Lyres are found in various shapes and sizes all over the world, but they are usually plucked with fingers or strummed with a plectrum. The bowed lyre is a much rarer beast. There are only three varieties that still exist today, including the Welsh crwth and the Estonian hiiu kannel. The third is the jouhikko from Finland, a fantastic instrument that came very close to extinction during the 20th century. Pekko Käppi has been at the forefront of its revival for the past 20 years.

The word jouhikko comes from jouhi – horsehair – which makes up both the instrument’s strings and bow. Traditionally with two strings and now as many as four, it is held between the knees and played by stopping one string with the finger knuckles while the bow also vibrates a second string as a drone. The player’s four fingers, held in a fixed position, mean that each string can only play five notes. The jouhikko’s scratchy, hair-on-hair timbre, constant drone and restricted range give it a guttural, throaty and naturalistic sound. It conjures in the mind smells of earth and woodsmoke, helped along by an evocative Nordic repertoire. It’s a sound that entranced Käppi from the start. He enthuses, “the first jouhikko I found, I plucked it, and it still gives me goosebumps to remember it. I hadn’t heard anything like that before. It sounded so old and otherworldly. It still sounds like that.”

No-one really knows how old the jouhikko is. It’s probably one of Europe’s oldest bowed instruments and there are theories that it evolved from Viking instruments, but, as Käppi laments, “there are lots of empty spots in the story of the jouhikko.” What is known is that by the turn of the 20th century, folk musicians had abandoned the instrument in favour of the more versatile fiddle and accordion. “There was only one family in Finland that kept playing,” he explains. “The fathers taught their children. The lineage was still going, but it wasn’t used in weddings or folk music any more. It had no functional use. It was practically dead.” It clung on, though, and a revival began in the 1980s amid renewed interest in the old Finnish music. It was pulled from the brink, but only just. By the time Käppi picked it up, there were still only a small handful of players, but that’s changing: “When I started to play jouhikko in 1997, there were maybe ten active players. I knew them all. But nowadays I don’t know all of them by name! It’s like the golden age of the bowed lyre, it starts to be again.”

A lot of that is down to Käppi and his contemporaries proving the range that the humble instrument can reach. Käppi himself, while also a scholar of the jouhikko’s folk repertoire, also turns it in the direction of heavy metal and punk – he even has a personalised instrument in the shape of a skull with flashing eyes. There is also Ilkka Heinonen, who finds space for the instrument among Baroque, jazz and avant-garde electronics, and Rauno Neimenen, now the premiere jouhikko maker in Finland. Together with Marianne Maans, they make up the Jouhiorkesteri, the first-ever all-jouhikko group.

The story of the past 20 years is encouraging, and Käppi has certainly played his part. He’s under no illusions, however, that the jouhikko is completely saved. For the instrument to be truly secure, it needs a next generation. Most players nowadays start in their 20s, and Käppi is searching for solutions. “There are not young kids playing jouhikko, because the jouhikkos are all too big! But a couple of years ago, we designed with Rauno a children’s jouhikko. It works really well, and my daughters have started to play. If it’s possible to start earlier, that’s a good thing for the future. That’s what makes the tradition living again, if there are younger people carrying it on. But we’ll see.”


Photo: Pekko Käppi live at WOMEX 19, by Jacob Crawfurd.