Customer Reviews

Real Life of Plants

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This is one of the more ambitious world music fusion experiments in recent years, bridging Tuvan, Russian and West African music. Kaigal-ool Khovalyg, (best known for his work with Huun Huur Tuu) is fabulous, as is Mola Sylla (Senegal). The album darts between Tuvan, West African, Jazz and many other fusions. While there are many times that these experiments don't work, there are also some true gems on the album.

This album brings together Tuvan throat-singer Kaigal-ool Khovalyg, Mola Sylla from Senegal, and two Russian jazz musicians in an attempt to combine traditional ethnic musics from two very different cultures into something new. Tuvan music is an acquired taste. I like it more than most people (in fact, I've seen Khovalyg in concert twice), so I'm as much a target audience as there can be for this album, and I just can't get into it at all. The album was recorded live. Only a few of the tracks even try to mesh the Tuvan and Senegalese sounds together--most of them go with one or the other while the other musicians jam in support. The CD is an eternal 72 minutes long, padded out with a jaw-harp track (an inevitable low point of virtually every Tuvan CD), the free-form jazz (or utter noise, depending on your generosity) "Doudobas", and two minutes of applause at the end of one mid-CD track. I'm presently debating whether this CD is worth the centimeter of space it takes up in my CD rack.