AfroCubism

AfroCubism | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 2, 2010)
• Original Release Date: 2010
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nonesuch
• ASIN: B0041ON2ZG
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #39,429 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The great world music album that-never-was has finally been realized. The project that became the Buena Vista Social Club has borne its own extraordinary fruit.

In 1996, a group of Mali's finest musicians were due to fly into Havana for a speculative collaboration with some of Cuba's most brilliant singers and instrumentalists. For reasons that have never been made clear, the Malians never arrived. A very different album was recorded: 'The Buena Vista Social Club'. The rest, as they say, is multi-million selling history.

But what about that original album? What riches might have been revealed in the interaction of virtuosi from one of Africa's most musically rich territories, and from Cuba whose music has origins in Africa, and has been hugely influential on the mother continent?

Now we have the opportunity to find out. World Circuit Records' Nick Gold, the man behind the 1996 venture, finally brought the original invitees together with a stellar line-up of additional talent at a series of inspirational sessions and the great lost Afro-Cuban album will be released fourteen years after originally planned.

Fronting the Cuban team is the cowboy-hatted singer and guitarist Eliades Ochoa, singer of the great Buena Vista theme 'Chan Chan.' The two original Malian invitees are multi award-winning ngoni lute master Bassekou Kouyate and the extraordinary Rail Band guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, both universally agreed to be among the world,s great instrumentalists. Joining them are Eliades' Grupo Patria, amongst Cuba's longest running and most revered bands, the mercurial kora genius Toumani Diabaté, legendary Malian griot singer Kasse Mady Diabaté and the innovatory balafon player Lassana Diabaté.

'It was as though the musicians had been holding back their ideas and energy for that moment,' says Gold, who produced the album, with the great Buena Vista engineer Jerry Boys at his side. 'After we'd waited so long, it all came together remarkably easily and spontaneously. The group had never played together before but the music just poured out and it continued to flow over the next few days.' Seventeen songs were recorded in five days, with all the musicians playing together 'live' in one large room. A second session was convened some months later and produced a further nine songs.

The title 'AfroCubism' is advised. This is an album that throws the elements of Cuban and African music in the air and lets them fall in entrancing new patterns.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different, Special Afro-Cuban Music November 5, 2010

By Dr. Debra Jan Bibel TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

This music is not the Afro-Cuban we are familiar from mid 20th century. Cuba and the concave region of Nigeria to the Congo are closely related in music, as the Afro- in Afro-Cuban historically refers to the percussive influences of West Central African slaves. The rumba, for instance, stems from Congo, Cameroon and it neighbors. Further north and west, Mali, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast, on the other hand, have a different, more lyrical musical tradition, which when brought by slaves to Colonial America, contributed to the blues. Thus, the meeting of a host of Cuban and Malian musicians is a unique exchange of musical ideas and timbre. Kora, balafon, ngoni, acoustic and electric guitar, maracas, congas, bongos, double bass, trumpets, violin, and vocals played by such renown stars as Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouate, Baba Sissoko, Djelimady Tounkara, Eliades Ochoa, José Angel Martinez, and Alain A. Dragoni, among others, provide a joyous musical experience. This is happy music, melodic and strongly rhythmic. A Malian or Cuban sound dominate particular tracks, but others are more balanced in interpretation. Such a combination of traditions produces an unusual but delightful style that deserves to be expanded and not remain just a one-time experiment. Bravo! Bravissimo! Encore!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Traditional Cuban and Mali meet November 28, 2010

By Marcos

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a very interesting album. While it is often said that Cuba is heavily influenced from Africa, the influence is not from Mali. Cuban culture's influence is more Congolese and Nigerian.

Hence what we have here is completely unprecedented. The Malians play a highly melismatic, monorhythmic, melodic music, whereas the Cubans have a more syncopated, polyrhythmic, monosyllabic sound. However the Cubans here play a relaxed Cuban Guajiro sound and not a the hard driving rhythms the Havana Son Montuno and Timba bands are known for. There are no timbales or trap drums in this recording.

The end result has multiple stringed instruments working together as if the band had been assembled for years over a light Maraca and hand drum rhythm. and for the melodic rhythm they use the Balafon, Malian Xylophone.

If you like it you might want to listen to Songhai and Songhai 2, which had a similar Malian instrumentation and feel mixed with Flamenco.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Afrocubismo. November 7, 2010

By Mauricio Saldivar

Format:Audio CD

Cuban singer and guitarist Eliades Ochoa returns to New York after more than ten years away from the hand of his new album, Afro-Cubism, and accompanied by musicians from Africa who participated in the recording.

"Let the joy of something new and hoping that the audience likes this blend of African and Cuban musicians, which I think is great," said the composer also referring to the album he did with his Cuarteto Patria and musicians of Mali.

Ochoa has not forgotten the great reception given to the group New Yorkers "Buena Vista Social Club", to which was filed more than a decade, you want to be repeated during the promotional tour for Afro-Cubism, referred to as "world music."

"I feel the same emotion and perhaps stronger because people are seeing a job that was done with great desire. Earlier, in "Buena Vista Social Club" all the musicians we knew because we were Cubans, everyone knew what was going to do all over the world, "he said in a telephone interview from Spain.

"But, here is a mixture of Africans and the Cubans and we had to fight hard (musically) so the thing goes well and offer the public the best because we want to take as a reward for their gratitude," he said.

The composer and virtuoso of the kora (21-string instrument, a mixture of harp and lute, which is widespread among the people of West Africa), Tounami Diabate, said during the presentation of the album in Spain, that did not need to save this job interpreters to understand because the music is a universal language.

Ochoa said it was difficult for both sides because they are different speeds and how to make music, but "the language that was had by all music."

"Tounami started playing, I heard him and drew on my guitar (music) that he played. We are not musicians staff. Eliades Ochoa is a musician of staff, so we could not do it and some of them (Africans) may know, but not all, so we had to play by ear, and that's not easy, "he said.

But he said "they have given everything to be mixed with Cuban music and mingle with us in Africa. All have put their two cents for the thing works out. "

Ochoa added that the public longs to be reunited with New York next week and show what they have done.

The mix of musicians from Africa and Cuba was a project that began 14 years ago on the Caribbean island and was frustrated by visa problems, but it was achieved with Afro-Cubism, an album that was released last July 9 in Cartagena.