World Music Matters

In this week's World Music Matters Alison Hird meets the Argentinian singer La Yegros who's known as the first lady of nu cumbia.

More on La Yegros' official website.

Nidhal Jaoua plays qanun with the five piece Franco-Tunisian band Jazz Oil. The traditional Middle Eastern stringed instrument, close to the zither, is a staple in classical Arabic music. But Jaoua is taking it out of its comfort zone, into the realm of jazz, funk and latin music. An improbable sound, but it works.

 Jaoua co-founded the band Jazz oil with bass player Slim Abida in 2009.

“When we commenced Jazz Oil, the idea was to make dialogue, conversation between bass and qanun,” Jaoua says. He saw it as a personal challenge to show that the oriental instrument could work alongside bass guitar and other western instruments,  and in a wide range of musical genres.

“No one was really doing that,” he explains. So there was no example to follow.

After seven years of struggling to get its unconventional music published, the band has brought out its debut album in France, the fittingly-named Lamma (encounter in Arabic).

“It’s a personal meeting with friends, and musical meeting of many cultures and many musics: oriental, Tunisian, funk, groove, latin, jazz. It’s a free music, no limits.”

The band has a following in Tunisia and last year played at the country’s biggest music festival Les Journées musicales de Carthage in front of an audience of 1,500. They hope to repeat the experience with several concerts this summer, but can't say when.

“It’s complicated in Tunisia” says Jaoua. "They don’t fix the dates til the last minute so you can’t do publicity.”

And while the situation for musicians in the alternative scene has improved over the last decade, it’s still hard to get programmed.

“Festival organisers tend to go for the same thing,” he says, and unsurprisingly it’s all about “who you know”.

But whether it's in Tunisia, France or anywhere else in the world, the message remains the same. "It's music that says welcome to all cultures, music to encourage humanity to come together."

Jazz Oil’s next concert in France is on 14 October at Cité Universitaire in Paris and at the Maison de la Tunisie.

Follow the band on facebook

Malian guitarist and N'goni player Pedro Kouyaté began as a percussionist with Malian bluesman Boubacar Traoré but broke away to try his luck as a solo musician. He found a loyal following playing in the Paris metro and passengers voted him "best instrumental musician 2016". 

Subway fans have enabled Kouyaté to produce four albums and perform live, most recently with his band of fine jazz musicians at Paris's Café de la Danse. But after 10 years underground, he feels he's ready to surface. He's looking for a producer to take his music to the widest audience possible. As he tells RFI, "when you're a griot, music is not just for your family, it's for everyone."

Follow Pedro Kouyaté on facebook

The young American trumpet player and composer Theo Croker has music running through his veins. His grandfather was none other than the late, great trumpet master Doc Cheatham. Armed with a strong sense of tradition, he incorporates hip hop and funk  to great effect in his music. After the recent release of his fourth album Escape Velocity he talks to RFI about discovering his spiritual self in Shanghai, the need for soulfulness in jazz and why he's calling out to his African ancestors.

Croker plays Paris's New Morning on 7 July. Follow him on Facebook

While many of the younger generation of Ghanaian musicians have turned to pop or rap, the young, talented singer-songwriter and guitarist Kyekyeku is flying the flag for an older accoustic folk genre known as Palmwine music.

Born in the early part of the twentieth century, Palmwine music was popular in both Ghana and Sierre Leone where S.E. Rogie and Koo Nimo brought it to wide audiences. Kyekyeku cut his teeth with Koo Nimo and has gone on to incorporate it into his own folk, Highlife and Afrobeat-inspired universe.

Following the release of his album Higher life on Palm Wine Kyekyeku talks to RFI about why he's drawn to the genre and why African musicians' main market has to be the African continent itself. "If we want to solve problems in Africa we have to sing to people in Africa," says the musician whose energetic enthusiasm for change will surely end up bearing fruit.

Kyekyeku has upcoming concerts in Europe and Africa. Follow him on facebook

French drummer and composer Anne Paceo has been nominated in the jazz category at this year's Victoires de la musique - the French equivalent of the Grammys. At the tender age of 32, the globe-trotting musician has already performed in more than 40 countries, breaking down musical boundaries between jazz, world and rock wherever she goes.

After the release of her fourth album Circles, she talks to RFI about drumming in a man's world and her love of Myanmar where she's helped introduce the young generation to jazz.

Paceo is currently on tour with her latest formation: Leila Martial (vocals), Emile Parisien (sax), Tony Paeleman (keys) and Christophe Panzani (saxophone).

Follow them on Facebook.

Our guest on this week's World Music Matters is Calypso Rose from the Carribean island of Trinidad and Tobago. The diva of calypso music has just released a new album Far From Home, featuring Manu Chao. She tells Alison Hird that she's an African at heart.

Conditions in France’s prisons have regularly been criticised by European institutions, but some prisons help inmates to keep their humanity through a range of cultural activities.  As part of the Jazz festival in St Germain des Prés, the women's short stay prison in Versailles opened its doors to French musicians Pierre Sibille and Gabriel Equerre.

"Everyone has music in his life," says Sibille, "when you're in jail you need something more than the four walls."

Sibille played largely from his latest album Catch me I'm falling, a mix of his own blues/soul compositions and covers of the likes of Taj Mahal and French poet-anarchist Leo Ferré.

He has a regular slot at the Sugar Bar in New York, but performing conditions were humbler at the women's prison: speakers mounted on white plastic laundry baskets, less than perfect accoustics.

But Sibille has a humanist vision of what a musician should be."Either you want to be listened to by the most people or you want to be useful," he says. He's gone with the latter. 

The concert went down well. "It was like escaping from prison for a moment, says Li (not her real name) "music breaks through the walls".

"It was a shame we couldn't dance," said another inmate before returning, along with the other 30 women, to her cell.

In this week's edition of World Music Matters, our guest is French singer-songwriter CharlElie Couture. He talks to RFI about his latest, 20th, studio album Lafayette: a voyage into cajun and zydeco music of French-speaking Louisiana in the U.S. A tribute to his double culture and love of "serious songs you can dance to".

On this week's World Music Matters, we hear from the young French duo Lillabox. Guitarist Alexandre Heztel and cellist Matthieu Deranlot tell RFI about their debut album Faidherbe Street, the culmination of four years of jamming night and day in their tiny home studio.

They're an unlikely couple: Matthieu the classically-trained cellist who began conservatoire aged five, Alexandre the self-taught guitarist and sound engineer. But  after a chance meeting at a musical workshop eight years ago something clicked.

Since then they've built a rich musical landscape together, drawing on traditions of Baroque, Indian raga, flamenco as well as rock.

For their "hand-made" album Faidherbe Street (released on 24 May) they've enlisted the talents of Palestinian percussionist Youssef Hbeisch. "He envelopes our music," says Alexandre, "bringing the bass, and high frequencies we don't have."

Canadian singer Tara Baswani lends her ethereal vocals to two of the tracks. But the album remains essentially accoustic, veering into the cinematographic on tracks like Clint and India.

The album is not the fruit of extensive travels, yet they manage to take the listener on a sensual voyage. "We dream it," they say by way of explanation.

Lillabox are a fine example of what you can achieve when you put talent, imagination and sheer graft into the mix.

We haven't heard the last of them.

Lillabox have an upcoming tour in Canada. They play Paris's Divan du Monde on 15 September. Follow them on facebook