World Music Matters

Electric Vocuhila combine the spirit of free-jazz legend Ornette Coleman with driving urban guitar rhythms like tsapiky from Madagascar or Congolese sebene. They masterfully sew them together on their pulse-raising third album, Palaces.

"I had a long time love for African music and the repetitive motifs used in bebop and free jazz," the band's saxophonist and composer Maxime Bobo told RFI just ahead of the Palaces release party in Paris.

The album is an electrifying patchwork of rhythms like tsapiky, sebene, sungura and benga.

They got into tsapiky after meeting France-based Damily, the king of this fast, electric-guitar led genre which he developed in Tuléar in the 1970s.

"We started to use its grooves and forms," Bobo said. "But doing it our own way, trying to get closer to this kind of 'dancey' feeling and fluidity, but using the saxophone and with the way we interact and compose together."

The band went to Madagascar, saw how the professionals did it, and came back inspired.

But their command of other rhythms like Congolese sebene or sungura from Zimbabwe has been garnered "mainly through the internet and YouTube," Bobo admitted. 

Together with the other band members: Boris Rosenfeld (guitar), François Rosenfeld (bass and guitar) Etienne Ziemniak (drums), they weave these rhythms together rather seemlessly.

They are all guitar-led, and yet Bobo plays saxophone.

"I’m much more attracted to these kind of guitar players or singers, the voices in tsapiky, of African styles," he said.

"I connect with this more than with contemporary saxophone players. I guess I’m trying to use the saxophone and to put somewhere between the voice, singing a song, and guitar riffs."

Bobo has found inspiration in sax player Ornette Coleman, the father of free jazz. Not so much because of his renowned harmolodics, but his "voice" and the way he let his band members express themselves.

"I loved his music when I heard it in my 20s. His playing is really open with very melodic lines, always rhythmic and warm. It has the feeling of a human voice."

Like many members of the free jazz movement, Coleman looked to the African continents for the roots of jazz.

"He played with the Masters of Joujouka from Morocco. There's one song on the Dancing On Your Head album," Bobo said.

But it was Ed Blackwell, one of the first drummers in Coleman's quartet, who was more connected to Africa and spent more time there. As did Archie Shepp. 

Electric Vocuhila make no claim to having their own connection with Africa.

"We grew up in an arty context, we don't have the experience of what it means to play for traditional events, funerals and so on."

Nonetheless they are keen to play with musicians from the African continent.

"it's obvious we're directly inspired by Madagascar or Congolese music so I think we want to try and play with muscians," Bobo said. "It's really interesting for us to connect and see how it works, how we can adapt the way we play with their music and what can happen with the mix."

The band was due to go to Madagascar this Autumn but the Covid-19 has pushed the trip back to next year.

They hope to find a voice there, a human one.

"I'm trying to get closer to the voice in the way I play the song parts, but it would be great to have a proper voice singing in Malagasy. That would be amazing."

Palaces is out on Capsul Records: a Tours-based music collective which supports some 25 musicians.

Electric Vocuhila official website here Follow the band on Facebook

Admas, a quartet of young Ethiopian musicians living in exile in Washington DC, had a ball recording an album of synth-heavy, funked up versions of Ethiopian classics. 'Sons of Ethiopia ' was soon forgotten but became cult among fans of ethiojazz. Now reissued by Frederiksberg Records, it reflects happier times from a generation that "just escaped" the worst of the Derg.

Some records are far more than the sum of their parts, and Sons of Ethiopia is one such.

The seven tracks were recorded in 1984 by the band Admas: Henock Temesgen, Abegasu Shiota, Tewodros “Teddy” Aklilu and Yousef Tesfaye.

Like so many Ethiopian expats in the U.S. at the time, the four young men had fled the Derg: the military junta that deposed Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. As the White Terror gave way to the Red Terror, over a million people died in the violence.

Aklilu, the band’s keyboard player, left Addis in 1977, aged 15, just before the worst of the Red Terror began.

“It was so sad, kids killed each other,” he told RFI on the line from Addis. “I went to the U.S. and basically closed my ears for the next two or three years.”

Aklilu closed his ears to the horror, but opened them to exciting new music.

When bass player Henock Temesgen, an old school friend, arrived in Washington DC in 1980 they began playing together.

“It was a very dark time but we found our cocoon, our own friends, playing in each other’s houses. We tried to create our own group, our own happy times,” said Temesgen.

The two friends played in a band called Gasha and took up residency at the Red Sea, a lively Ethiopian restaurant in Washington.

They would open for big Ethiopian names like Aster Aweke, playing instrumentals to audiences of expats, many of whom had lost friends and family in the civil war.

While they enjoyed traditional Ethiopian music, they immersed themselves in the sounds of their new home with its go go funk, jazz, highlife, samba and roots reggae.

Brazilian jazz fusion band Azymuth, The Crusaders and Spyro Gyra were big influences, they said.

“In DC you got to hear a lot more of what the world has to offer, than in Ethiopia, and it’s very natural that when you hear something you want to experiment with it,” Aklilu explained.

What’s more, there were new tools like Moog keyboards, synthesisers and electric guitars to play with.

Joined by drummer Yousef Tesfaye and multi-instrumentalist Abegasu Shiota, the musicians expressed their more experimental side under the new name of Admas.

“Abagasu liked to work with computers, he had a four track very basic recorder and started playing with it, said it would be nice to record something,” Temesgen said.

They scraped the funds together to record seven tracks and had 1,000 copies pressed.

They sold a few, paid off their debts, but didn’t make any money.

“We didn’t have any business sense,” Aklilu laughed. “We still don’t!”

They recorded instrumental, high-tech versions of songs largely from “the golden era, the good old days, Ethiopian music from happier times” Temesgen explained.

“The experimentation was not in the melody but in the harmonisation and rhythm,” said Aklilu.

They did “a reggae-ish version” of Wed Enate, put samba rhythms into Samba Shegitu and paid tribute to Ghanaian highlife on Bahta’s Highlife although, as Aklilu admitted, it owes more to Congolese soukous.

On Tez Alegn Yetintu, the band drew out its melancholic blues feeling.

“It’s a popular song and we played it in half time, so for a lot of people the melody would be very slow. But we played it like a really melancholic blues song.”

Spurred on by the optimism of their youth, Admas bent some of these melancholic old melodies into new shapes.

“I think the music you can hear on the album is our experience of America basically, it was more hopeful than sad,” said Aklilu.

“And also our personalities come through the music,” Temesgen continued. “During that time our personalities were optimistic and hopeful.”

“We were not damaged by the revolution, we escaped, we were lucky. And I think the album might reflect that age group that just escaped.”

The men moved on, went their separate ways and forgot about the album.

Then decades later, Aklilu was contacted by Andreas Vingaard, founder of NY-based Frederiksberg Records. A big fan of Francis Falceto’s Ethiopiques compilations, Vingaard had stumbled on Sons of Ethiopia and wanted to reissue the record.

“When I heard Admas for the first time, it sounded very different from any other Ethiopian music I had heard,” he told RFI.

“It's clearly Ethiopian, but it's different and familiar at the same time. It's incredible to me that so many years later it still has a real freshness to it.”

The men were surprised the album had generated new interest.

“We didn’t know but a lot of people have been collecting it and liked it; it was being sold for a lot of money on eBay. Somebody said the album had a cult following,” Aklilu recalled.

“It is great music,” Temesgen admitted, but “I didn’t think people outside the Ethiopian community would know about the way I felt.”

“It will be a surprise for this generation I think,” said Aklilu.

Three of the band members have made successful careers in music.

Aklilu now works on music research projects and sometimes tours with Ethiopian pop star Teddy Afro, Temesgen has become a prominent music educator and Shiota is one of the country’s top recording engineers. They’ve played together and don’t rule out releasing another Admas album one day.

The music scene in Ethiopia is “very vibrant” the Admas duo said, with lots of young bands playing in a range of genres: ethio-jazz, pop music and traditional.

But this promising scene is hamstrung by heavy import taxes of up to 300 percent on musical instruments, which are deemed luxury items.

“It’s killing the music here, it’s really damaging us,” regretted Aklilu. “Musicians can’t afford instruments; it’s one thing the government needs to change so music can grow in this country.”

Sons of Ethiopia, on vinyl and cd, complete with detailed liner notes, is available here. 

Italian composer Ennio Morricone was famed for his film scores but his work straddled jazz, pop, psychedelia as well as the avant-garde, influencing bands as diverse as Air and Metallica.

Ennio Morricone left behind some 500 scores for both film and television.

The theme tune to Sergio Leone’s spaghetti western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is undoubtedly one of the most renowned.

“Just 10 seconds into one of Morricone’s soundtracks, you know it’s him, you know which film it’s from, you can see the pictures,” said French composer Jean-Michel Jarre in the wake of the Italian composer’s death on 6 July.

To recreate this feeling of the American far west, Morricone added on drums, some flute, and of course the "cry" of a coyote.

The trademark whistling came courtesy of Spanish guitarist and whistler Curro Savoye, who now lives in the south of France.

The two men never met, but Savoye was "the" whistler on the vast majority of Morricone’s work.

The film soundtrack also includes “Ecstasy of Gold” – a stirring three-minute orchestral bonanza with drums to set you galloping into the sunset and wordless vocals by Edda Dell’orso with whom Morricone regularly collaborated.

The music is so stirring it became a fetish piece for U.S. band Metallica. Since 1983 they’ve played it to open all their concerts.

They recorded their own version of “The Ecstasy of Gold” for their tribute album to Morricone in 2007, and performed the song themselves for the first time at a 2009 concert in Copenhagen.

Metallica frontman James Hetfield said something special happened when they begun using the piece as their intro music in 1983.  “It set us up for the night and the fans got excited.”

In a tribute to Morricone on Instagram, he said the music had become “part of our blood flow, deep breathing, fist bumping, prayers and band huddle pre-show ritual ever since”.

'Elevated every film he scored'

Morricone wrote scores for six of Sergio Leone’s westerns. Their last collaboration was in 1984 for Once upon a time in America.

It was customary at the time to write the soundtrack before shooting the film, but still, Morricone’s music was so evocative that the director played it on set to conjure up the right atmosphere.

Sergio Leone’s westerns helped make Morricone a household name but the composer’s artistic reach knew no bounds.

Here in France, his biggest hit is the violin-heavy “Chi Mai” which famously featured in the 1981 film “The Professional” starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Morricone was nominated for a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar.

“His work elevated every film he scored,” wrote composer John Zorn in the NY Times, adding that Morricone could “make an unforgettable melody with a fistful of notes."

He did that not just in films but during his foray into pop in the 60s.

Arguably his most celebrated song, at least in his home country, was Se Telefonando sung by Mina. Were in not in Italian it could have rivalled with Burt Bacharach.

The refrain was inspired by the three notes of a French police siren and builds into a stand-up finale thanks to eight key changes!

Among the many French musicians who say they owe a lot to Morricone is electronic music duo Air.

Nicolas Godin said Morricone was among the composers who had most influenced him for "the way he used timbres and sounds that were close to avant-garde music".

Morricone’s influence can be heard on Prologo per la puttana di closingtown from the album City Reading (Tre Story Western), recorded with Italian writer Alessandro Baricco in 2003.

“I realized my Roman fantasy around music from westerns,” Godin told Les Inrockuptibles. “Ennio Morricone will remain the absolute master of Continental music.”

It’s often said that Morricone was sore and saddened at not being fully recognised as a classical composer. But he was.

His score for the 1986 film The Mission, in which he incorporated religious chant and tribal rhythms, remains one of his most haunting pieces, not least for the melancholy of its main them Gabriel’s Oboe.

A fistful of notes that lifted, and continue to lift, anyone who cares to listen.

Ennio Morricone's official website.

"Everyday I walk in this city, I know I walk alongside death," singer Hachalu Hundessa said just days before he was shot dead in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 28 June. We hear how the 34-year old protest singer became the voice of the Oromo ethnic group. "He was the soundtrack of the 2018 revolution that brought change to Ethiopia" Awol Allo told RFI.  

The murder of Hachalu Hundessa last Monday sent thousands of Oromo out onto the streets in protest. More than one hundred have died in the unrest.

There have been protests and mourning not just in the capital Addis and elsewhere in Ethiopia, but also in Minnesota, US, where a large Oromo diaspora settled after fleeing political repression and discrimination back home.

Like many Oromo artists, Hachalu could have fled, but chose to stay. Prophetically, just a week before his death, he told journalists he was well aware of the risks he was taking.

"He said: ‘What I am afraid of is a meaningless death, a death that has no purpose. I’m not afraid because I have a clarity of purpose in terms of what I want to achieve’," UK-based academic and Oromo rights activist Awol Allo told RFI.

Hachalu’s main focus as a singer was highlighting and defending the Oromo cause and it earned him many enemies.

"One of the things that makes it so complex, so painful, is the fact that Oromo is a majority group (in Ethiopia) but subordinated economically, marginalised culturally and repressed politically," Allo continued.

Hachalu used "his incredible imaginative power, verbal invention and poetic expression to very ably articulate some of those issues".

"It’s almost impossible to think of anyone else who has used the power of art, the power of music (like he did) to push a transformative political agenda forward."

Hachalu began writing songs aged 17 when he was imprisoned for five years for his political activities.

He released his first album Sanyii Mootii (Race of the King) in 2009, a year after leaving prison. The title track is about falling in love with an Oromo woman who is proud of her identity and prepared to die for it.

His second album Waa’ee Keenya (Our Plight) came out in 2013 while he was touring the US and became a top African seller on Amazon.

Hachalu played a key role in the Oromo protests from 2015 to 2018 which led to the fall of the Ethiopian government.

"He was one of the most important voices in the Oromo protests and ultimately forced the resignation of the then prime minister [Hailemariam Desalegn] and the appointment of the current prime minister Abiy Ahmed," Allo said. "From that point of view he was basically the soundtrack of that revolution that brought change."

"It’s essentially a song about dispossession and the government’s policy of land grab around the city of Addis Ababa," said Allo, "displacing hundreds of thousands of farmers.

"What the video to the song shows is the gradual displacement and eviction, one by one, of young people who live there with their families then ultimately becoming day labourers on their own land."

By 2017 the political situation was evolving and his following hit, Jira (We are here), reflected that growing sense of hope.

While the song was written just before Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, became prime minister in 2018 "the message was that ‘we have come so far, things have changed so much on the ground and this is a moment of hope’".

Protest song has always been a part of Oromo culture.

"As a community that has been historically marginalised and subordinated and denied the opportunity to receive modern education, Oromo art has always served as a repository of Oromo experiences and history", Allo explained.

"So if you really want to learn about the history of the Oromo you go into these songs, songs of resistance," Allo continued. "It’s in the reservoir of these songs that you find the true and authentic experience of the Oromo people. It’s not in the official archives, in the history and geography books of the Ethopian state."

Oromo artists make ready use of a style known as geerarsa, a kind of flow, not unlike rap, which is used to whip up an audience.

"Geerarsa is a kind of free style narration of certain experiences, mainly used to mobilise people, to galvanise support for a particular cause. It’s a deeply-entrenched part of our culture," Allo explained.

The now legendary ‘Millenium’ benefit concert Hachalu gave in Addis December 2017 for the rehabilitation of some 700,000 internally displaced Oromo shows his ability to set audiences alight.

He paces the stage chanting: ‘You can no longer pin us down, we are too big, too hopeful, too resilient, too fired up’.

Hachalu also had an extraordinary capacity to unite the huge and politically heterogenous Oromo community.

"We’re a very large community of 50 plus million people so you obviously have a lot of views about how people should organise and mobilise, there are differences," Allo said.

"But the thing for which Hachalu is credited the most is that he’s preaching unity, crying of Oromo unity. It’s almost impossible right now to think of somebody who could fill his shoes."

Inspiring speeches are great, but a song can travel and connect people like nothing else. After the tragic death of George Floyd, musicians are helping to bring issues of police violence and social justice to the fore. Beyoncé, queen of R 'n' B,  and the young gospel singer Keedron Bryant have just released songs with a strong 'Black Lives Matter' message.

After exploring Zoroastrian chants on her 2016 album “Gathas, songs my father taught me”, mezzo soprano Ariana Vafadari puts femininity to the fore with the heart-wrenching “Anahita”, inspired by the Persian prophet Zarathustra and the goddess of water. Ten deeply spiritual songs set to Oriental maqam scales, tracing a path from despair to resolution.

French-Iranian Vafadari has a successful career as an international opera singer, but remains deeply attached to her Zoroastrian roots. 

“I’m from two cultures,” she said. “I love opera more than anything but a part of me needed to express the origins, the music of Iran, the Oriental music.”

She learned Gathas - Zoroastrian prayers dating back some 3,700 years - from her father. 

“Gatha means song but we have no idea how it was sung at that time,” she said. “Just the prayers were kept and now the priest chants them. I wanted to compose music on it and make it more alive.”

She did just that for her 2016 album "Gathas, songs my father taught me". 

“It was something I gave to my father, I think it was my father’s side, my more masculine side: knowing, understanding, finding the way."

The album "Anahita" was inspired by the legend of the Persian goddess of water, fertility and wisdom. The story was introduced to Vafadari by Leili Anvar, a specialist in Persian literature who wrote the lyrics for seven of the songs.

Anvar's adaptation involves a modern day Iranian young woman whose village is plagued by drought, forcing its inhabitants to flee. She is visited by the goddess in a dream and goes on a quest to find the source of water.

Vafadari said the legend spoke to her in a world dominated by the over-exploitation of the world's resources. "It's a world of grabbing land, producing more; the masculinity is so powerful that I felt a lack of femininity in my own world and in myself."

In addition to original compositions, Vafadari sings three prayers from Zoroastrianism’s holy book known as the Avesta.

“The three prayers are the way Anahita finds her own femininity, the link to her ancestors and to earth and to water.”

Vafadari has surrounded herself with superb musicians from France, Turkey, Morocco and Iran: Julien Carton (piano), Driss El Maloumi (oud), Leila Soldevila and Nicolas Deutsch (double bass), Habib Meftah Boushehri (calabash, bendir, daf). 

“It’s important to show that our generation is a mixture of cultures, all these musics have to stay alive and stay together."

Follow Ariana Vafadari 

Purchase the album 

There are big names in The Eddy, a Netflix series about a struggling jazz club in Paris. But the real star is jazz. And since coronavirus is depriving us of the thrill of live music, the jazz sessions recorded with its own six-piece band provide music lovers a much needed fix. Composer Glen Ballard and saxophonist Jowee Omicil talk about the joy of putting music first.

All the songs in The Eddy were written by award-winning American composers Glen Ballard and Randy Kerber. 

The series began with a song and an idea back in 2007.

“Ive lived in Paris off and on all my adult life," Ballard told RFI.  "And I’ve always loved the fact that Paris still had jazz clubs, still had young people going to the clubs, listening to music being played live.

"So I had this concept of a club that I called The Eddy: a perfect jazz club where you could go and have the greatest band in the world and a great singer, and you could find some kind of connection with that music and work out some of your own problems.”

That “greatest band” is the Eddy Cast Band - formed especially for the series with Ludovic Louis (trumpet), Damian Nueva (double bass), Jowee Omicil (saxophone) Randy Kerber (piano) Lada Obradovic (drums) and Joanna Kulig on vocals.

“It’s a truly international band showing that jazz is an international language now,” said Ballard.  “We have a drummer from Croatia, a sax player from Haiti, a bass player from Cuba, a piano player from the U.S., a trumpet player from Paris and a singer from Poland. But they all share the same language which is jazz and it’s really high musicianship.”

“It was an honour to play with all of these musicians, it’s truly an 'All Star' band,” said Paris-based Jowee Omicil who plays Joey the saxophonist.

The first two episodes of The Eddy were directed by Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle. He insisted the jazz sessions in the club be recorded live. 

“We’re playing for real so if you’re messing up it's going to show,” Omicil recalled.  "There were many ‘one takes’!”

Glen Ballard meanwhile wanted the music to be easy to listen to, but difficult to play. Omicil said they succeeded. 

“I was telling Randy Kerber and also Glen: ‘I feel like I'm back at Berkeley, 19 years old in 1997 and I've got to learn how to play to play this music, this tradition of music, but from today’. They evolved the music, we went into pop and electronic.”

The composers didn’t want The Eddy to be a nostalgia trip to the jazz of Paris St Germain of the 50s and 60s when figures like Miles Davis found solace and respect in its jazz caverns. 

“Our jazz sits beautifully with hip hop and we have a lot of North African influences coming into our music through (French rapper) Sopico especially,” said Ballard. “We try to study the North African movement in jazz and marry it to what is a truly international band.”

Whatever the style of jazz, the important thing is to keep it live.

“We don't have a lot of times where we can have music in the forefront like that,” said Omicil, “where you could see musicians processing music and conducting their lives.” 

The series was released on 8 May when France and much of the world was still in lockdown. A pertinent time for watching musicians performing live.

“People say: ‘I'm going to The Eddy tonight’. They are actually taking the Netflix series to go and travel to places where they cannot go today,” said Omicil. “I mean you cannot go to a club and have an audience. We mustn’t forget that the audience feeds us.”

The idea of playing in empty venues "doesn't have the same dynamic".

Glen Ballard remains grateful to screenwriter Jack Thorne for allowing music to play such a central part in the drama.

“It’s truly a love letter to these incredible musicians who dedicate their whole life to learning how to play an instrument and they don’t do it for money or fame because you don’t get famous for being a jazz musician in 2020. It’s also a love letter to all the people who still want to do it, who put years of work into it for these great moments to happen on stage.”

Omicil can’t wait to get back on stage. 

“The lockdown was an unwanted lockdown, it’s as if we got locked up. And now we are excited. So we want to keep this excitement going.” 

He recorded some 15 hours of music during that time and will release an album, Lecture, this autumn.  

“It's going to be different, very controversial, perhaps. It's something I had to get out my system because it's really free music.”

He still believes in the ‘we are one’ idea he explored on his previous album “Love Matters”. But admits that in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the need to remind the world that black lives matter, we clearly haven’t reached that level of consciousness.

“We must not forget we are all creatures on this planet. It’s true we’re not there and since we're not there we’re at war. So we need to move, very wisely and carefully, with harmony. We're back to music and that's a positive note right there.”

Follow Jowee Omicil on facebook

The Eddy soundtrack is available on CD and double vinyl LP here

When Swiss beatmaker FlexFab was doing a set in the coastal town of Kilifi, Kenya, a young Kenyan rapper Ziller Bas grabbed the mike and delivered his "Swengflow". The chemistry was immediate and six months later the two artists are set to release their debut EP Mugogo! A dancefloor must.

Pablo Fernandez, who's been working under the moniker FlexFab for a decade or so, likes to work outside his comfort zone. He's lent his beatmaking skills to Kenya's Muthoni Drummer Queen, Batuk from South Africa, rapper Rozzma from Egypt, Malaysian singer The Venopian Solitude...

In August 2019,  a Swiss music non-profit, Flee, invited him to East Africa for a series of exchanges with local musicians. During a gig in Kilifi, some 70kms north of Mombasa, Baraka Shujaa, an MC going under the name Ziller Bas couldn't resist joining in. 

"The beats were so good, I was so excited I had to jump in," the 25-year old rapper said on the line from Kilifi.

"This freestyle session with Ziller Bas was magic, the kind of moment that only happens a few times in your life," FlexFab said. He found a way to return to Kilifi in January this year with a mobile studio. In just two weeks they recorded 14 tracks, a documentary about their story and three videos. 

Their EP Mugogo part 1 has four tracks for hot club nights.

Ziller Bas lays down his vocals in his very own Swengflow: a mix of Swahili, English and his native Giriama.

The title track Mugogo has a hypnotic beat, with traditional percussion from shakers known locally as kayamba which Flexfab recorded live when doing the final mix.

"I didn't sample music, all the songs are original," he said. "There's some synthesizer, a lot of electronic things but a big part of the job I did at the end of the project was to add some live percussion."

"Mugogo means great, like the king, someone magical, noble, with dignity," Ziller Bas explained. "It's derived from a leader here in Mijikenda called Karissa Maita."

Maita was a former tourism minister and an MP from Mombasa's kisauni area known affectionately as "Mugogo, wa pwani": Mijikenda for "Big Man of the Coast". He was a popular politician who defended the interests of coastal peoples, encouraging them to speak out about the politics of exclusion.

The track Sawa Sawa means OK in Swahili: an upbeat, positive song "about feeling good," Ziller Bas said.

Vituko meanwhile is "very poetic and more political. It talks about challenges in the hood, in the ghetto here, how people live. It's giving people hope, talking about difficulties and telling them they shouldn't give up."

Due to the coronavirus the duo are releasing this first EP with four rather than the initial seven tracks and Mugogo part 2 should be out in the Autumn.

"When the crisis is over I hope Ziller Bas can come to Europe to do festivals with me and spread the project live. It has to be live, to be enjoyed with the people."

Mugogo part 1 is out on 12 June. Purchase it here.

Follow FlexFab and Ziller Bas on facebook

When musicians Amadou Diagne and Cory Seznec had a chance encounter in a bar in Bath in 2007, they knew one day they would record together. Thirteen years later, after many "touki" (journeys), they've embarked on a new musical adventure with a debut album Right of Passage. They talk to RFI about making new roots music with kora, banjo and guitar.

“It was a fortuitous meeting of like-minded kindred spirits,” said Seznec, a French-American singer-songwriter, guitarist and clawhammer banjoist who’s honed his sound through travels on the African continent.

He was playing in a bar with his band Groanbox when Diagne showed up with his djembe after a day of busking and the two men began improvising together.

“The energy was fantastic ... some really simple connection happened back in 2007," said Seznec.

They played gigs from time to time, Seznec bringing Diagne on board “for his percussive and harmony prowess” but it took more than a decade for them to form the duo Touki and get into the studio.

“It was always in the back of our minds that we should do something, but life took us in different directions,” Seznec continued. "And then finally the stars aligned.”

When Diagne secured a grant from the Arts Council of England, he immediately thought of Seznec.

“It my dream for a long time to do something with him,” said Diagne, a multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer-songwriter from near Dakar and who settled in the UK in 2004.

“I just tell him ‘hey man, come on, this is the time now, let’s do it’!”

The two musicians rehearsed in Paris and recorded 13 tunes in Peter Gabriel’s World Circuit Records studios in southwestern England.

Diagne, who was born into a Griot family of drummers and praise singers, sings in Wolof and dug deep into his own personal history for inspiration on several songs.

Yaye Bouye is about his mother dying when he was a young boy, while Tirailleurs draws a parallel between his difficult beginnings in the UK and the Senegalese Tirailleurs who fought bravely alongside French troops in various world wars. Diagne’s own grandfather, Mass Mboup, was decorated by the French for his bravery in WW2.

Two songs, Yaen Yalay and Machallah are influenced by Seznec’s three years in Ethiopia and feature Endris Hassen on the one-string bowed lute known as masenqo.

“Yaen Yalay means ‘thank you’ in Eritrean. It’s a sort of banjo percussive, instrumental track, a nod to Ethiopia and Eritrea,” said Seznec. “It has a very traditional vibe. Even though it’s banjo playing, it speaks to the krar.

“Machallah is a kind of classic pentatonic thing but has a bit of an Ethiopian traditional vibe as well. It could be East or West Africa. Amadou plays some amazing calabash on that, and sings.”

The tune Meeting at the roots is a fine example of the way Seznec’s guitar resonates with Diagne’s kora.

“It was a bit of the goal actually, to mix the kora and banjo or kora and guitar, for it to be very seamless,” said Seznec. “The idea was to sort of lock it together.”

Diagne grew up playing a traditional drum known as the saba and spent seven years as a percussionist with Senegal’s national orchestra. In line with his family griot tradition he could not play the kora, but was drawn to the sound.

"I was just watching and listening, I loved to listen to Salif Keita and Mory Kanté,” he recalled.

When he was around eight he heard the Sissokho family playing the kora. He was on his way to a footall match but the sound stopped him in his tracks.

“I was standing in the door and I forgot I was going to play football," Diagne laughed. "The others said ‘you paid! But I tell them ‘take the money and go, I want to stay here and listen.”

Once in the UK, he began playing percussion for UK-based kora players like Jali Fily Cissokho and Modou Ndiaye.

“I start to get the feeling of the kora,” he said. “I was sitting in the back and playing all the time. I love this rhythm.”

Touki was meant to tour the album in France and the UK this Spring but the coronavirus pandemic put paid to that.

“We’re reeling like everyone else and trying to figure out what the next step is. We’re releasing the album now, hope to create a bit of momentum and figure out when we can get back to touring. We’re shooting for the Spring of next year with a tour in May of 2021 in the UK, if all goes well.

“But basically we’ve deleted a full year and are sad about that.”

Seznec can count on Diagne’s optimism and energy to keep the duo’s momentum up.

“He’s taught me a lot, he could be like a mentor in a way because of what he’s been through. He’s just breathing and oozing music and positive vibrations. He buoys me up.”

Musicians on Right of Passage: Diagne - vocals, kora, percussion, guitar; Seznec - vocals, guitars, banjo, gourd banjo, percussion; Special Guests: Oscar Cainer - upright bass (2) Endris Hassen - masenqo (1,4,6) El Hadj Amadou Ndir - electric bass (10,11) Michael Ward-Bergeman – accordion

Right of Passage is available here.

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When N'Djamena-based electro band Pulo NDJ found themselves stranded in Abuja with no chance of returning to Chad because of the coronavirus, they made their way to Lomé, set up a home studio and recorded a song about living in lockdown. Their story is one of friendship and remaining creative through the crisis.

Since the release of their acclaimed debut album Desert to Douala in March 2019, Pulo NDJ has spread its inventive blend of traditional Chadian rhythms with an electro beat around West Africa.

In March they were invited by the Institut Français in Abuja to head up DJ-ing workshops and give concerts in Nigeria.

But the coronavirus stopped them in their tracks. With borders shut, they found themselves stranded in Abuja, unable to return to N’Djamena. 

“The concert was cancelled and we had to return to Chad but Chad closed its border," said guitarist Stingo. "We got help from friends."

The band headed to his home country of Togo and found shelter at Luc’s (aka Lord Kossivi), a member of the HAPE Collective which produced the Desert to Doula album.

They were introduced to the French filmmaker, Marion Poizeau, who was also locked down in Lomé. Together they turned to music as a way of pushing back the walls.

“Luc lent them his home studio, Walid (the keyboard player) had his computer, Stingo his guitar and I lent them a mike,” said Poizeau. “We made do with what we had.”

They began writing and one song - Confinement - talks of what it feels like to be in lockdown.

It’s a pensive cream-pop song with a universal message: ‘We’re all here together, we’re stuck, we’re in lockdown,’ Poizeau sings.

“The idea was to express what we were feeling being stuck together in a house,” said the filmmaker turned backing vocalist.

“Making music was also a big help during this time, to make the time go faster and more enjoyable," she added.

Poizeau made a video for the song showing the five of them trapped inside the house, set against backgrounds of the ocean, grasslands, and an array of untrammelled wild animals.

Making music has allowed them to remain positive and break the feeling of social distancing.

“We did this to share what’s happening here and to share the way we met and created together," Poizeau said. "So even if it’s a crisis we can still be creative and produce something positive. I hope we can share our positive idea of keeping making music with the rest of the world.”

Lockdown is having a devastating impact on musicians, not least in Lomé where the night-time curfew has deprived them of the bars and music venues they would usually play in.

“It’s tough, there’s no more work, bars are closed and people can't gather more than 10 at a time, so weddings and everything is stopped,” said Poizeau. "And what’s difficult is not knowing for how long it will last. We’re all victims of the situation but for artists it is definitely a hard time.”

The band hopes to earn something from digital sales of the song Confinement, but the toll of lockdown goes beyond money.

“It’s logical that when you don’t work you don’t earn money,” said lead singer Samy aka Gari Boy. “But over and above that, your spirit feels empty when you’re not able to give pleasure, to share and have exchanges with others.

“Music is the only thing we know how to do. Not having the means to make other people happy leaves you feeling diminished. It’s disturbing.”

While they wait to be able to perform in public again, the band's makeshift studio in Lomé is where it's at.

“We set out to record one song, Confinement, but it's turned into an album,” said Poizeau. "It'll be the lockdown album."

Songs include the up-tempo Mushendo - an ode to the fuller-figured woman - sung in the colloquial Aoussa language from Cameroon.

And Woezon meaning “welcome” in the Mina language from Togo.

“It’s about welcoming a newborn but could also symbolise the birth of our album,” Poizeau explained. 

“We don’t know when or how we’ll be able to produce and promote the album,” said Gari Boy philosophically. “But we now have a box full of songs!”

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Buy the song Confinement  here