Afro goes cuban

[Paul]

Cant wait

[Michel]

Got my tickets for 12th november in Amsterdam since weeks allready...

[bubudi]

can't wait for this! even better than toumani's songhai collaborations. it's a truly beautiful thing when people from separate parts of the world are all speaking the same language. the only thing i'm wishing for is a nice fat set of dunun.

[Michel]

A review: I saw the concert the 12th in Amsterdam. For me it wasn't the highlight I expected. The sound-engineer didn't manage to create a clear sound, it sounded blurry. The band played as on the cd, almost in the same order. Some nice solo's of Djelimady Tounkara, one song with only balafon, Kora, guitar and jelin'goni was the best of the concert. As percussion only conga's, tamani and calebas. It was great to see (as I was told) Baba Cissoko's brother play tama and calebas at the same time. But there was a lack of true inspiration, and bubudi: no nice set of dunun..... I hope your experiences will be better, because the potential is in my opinion one of the best the world has to offer.

Michel

[e2c]

This group was Nick Gold's idea (he's one of the bigwigs at World Circuit), and ... let's just say that I think these kinds of "supergroup" collaborations are often less interesting than the hype they generate.

In saying that, I mean no disrespect to any of the musicians involved - I really like them all!

As for "Afro goes Cuban," I think that's been done much more successfully by various African salsa groups.

Edited to add: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/se ... uena-vista

[James]

Here's the CD on Amazon:


I've been listening to it all day and it's great.

You can also download a free track from the World Circuit website

[e2c]

I like what I've heard of the album, too, but I can see it working better as a studio project than as a touring group.

I think one of the reasons for that is that with so many instruments that have a similar tonality (kora, ngoni, tres, etc.), it's probably very hard to make them sound distinct from one another in a concert situation.