..."Malian ngoni virtuoso Bassekou Kouyate – who states that time-honoured intention to me through an interpreter, while waiting to record a live radio session at the BBC – the record in question actually achieves its goal.
In a year dominated by female-fronted electropop and breakthrough urban crossover acts, the propulsive pleasures of rock ’n’ roll have been a little hard to come by. But the momentum generated in the course of I Speak Fula (the marvellously propulsive second album by Kouyate’s seven-strong ensemble, Ngoni Ba, which includes three other ngoni players, two percussionists and his wife, the powerful singer Amy Sacko) locates the group closer to the hallowed hard rock terrain of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird than the earthenware ghetto for which the world music circuit is sometimes mistaken.
The ngoni, Kouyate’s musical weapon of choice, is a hollowed-out piece of wood, covered in dried cowhide, with four strings running up a fretless neck. It looks like a kayak paddle or a small cricket bat, and creates (in the right hands) the thrillingly kinetic ripple of a more versatile banjo. As well as teaching the ngoni at his own academy in the Malian capital Bamako, rising interest in these increasingly fashionable instruments drives Kouyate to export them to Europe. ..." ( Telegraph, UK )
In a year dominated by female-fronted electropop and breakthrough urban crossover acts, the propulsive pleasures of rock ’n’ roll have been a little hard to come by. But the momentum generated in the course of I Speak Fula (the marvellously propulsive second album by Kouyate’s seven-strong ensemble, Ngoni Ba, which includes three other ngoni players, two percussionists and his wife, the powerful singer Amy Sacko) locates the group closer to the hallowed hard rock terrain of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird than the earthenware ghetto for which the world music circuit is sometimes mistaken.
The ngoni, Kouyate’s musical weapon of choice, is a hollowed-out piece of wood, covered in dried cowhide, with four strings running up a fretless neck. It looks like a kayak paddle or a small cricket bat, and creates (in the right hands) the thrillingly kinetic ripple of a more versatile banjo. As well as teaching the ngoni at his own academy in the Malian capital Bamako, rising interest in these increasingly fashionable instruments drives Kouyate to export them to Europe. ..." ( Telegraph, UK )
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