Customer Reviews

Toto Bona Lokua

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
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The twelve tracks, four written by each of the three contributors falls beyond any real category. It links something of the style of each of the countries they come from, Bona from Cameroon, Kanza from the Congo and Toto from a French West Indian background, and mixes them with an immediacy and an intimacy that comes from their pooled heritage. Recorded in home studios over two days around Christmas 2003, the voices are mixed up front with a minimum of other instrumentation,mainly acoustic guitar, bass, some piano and percussion but a wonderfully fluent and flowing set of backing vocals except on "Stesuff" where Kanza plays piano.There are songs in several languages (and mixtures of languages) but what emerges is the joy of creating something so warm and intimate. It seems pointless picking out favourite tracks, because this is an album where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. However, if you want a flavour of just how diverse the product can be, listen to Bona's "Ghana Blues" and set it against Toto's "Help me" Having started with such an amazing set it would be pleasing to think that there would be a more 'produced' album to follow it from the three men.In the meantime this will do well an opening effort. Highly recommended for warm summer evenings, and here's to their next effort!

It's hipster jazz - tinged a cappella blends of doo-wop meets swing: a very different experience, blending African backgrounds with jazz singing in a style Ladysmith never dreamed of.