Salif Keita i Operaen

Saturday July 15, 20.00

Salif Keita (voc), Mamadou Kone (calabash), Diely Moussa Kouyaté (g), Ousmane Kouyaté (g), Souleymane Doumbia (perc), Harouna Samake (kamale n’goni), Roger Biwandu (dr), Mike Clinton (b), Eliane Zamati, Maria Marolany (voc)

Salif Keita can trace his ancestors all the way back to Soundjata Keita, who founded the kingdom Mali in 1240. Originally, he had planned to become a teacher but, because of difficulties finding a job he changed his mind. That a man from The Royal Family began as a musician in Mali in the 1960s, caused a storm of protest and Salif Keita was expelled from school. However, he formed a trio with his brothers and began to play on the streets and the nightclubs of Bamako, Mali's capitol. In 1970 he was invited to play in Rail Band, an orchestra supported in part by public money that played in the restaurant of the railway hotel in Bamako. In Rail Band he came into contact with Kante Manfila who had many of the same ideas as Keita concerning the blending of disparate styles. Mali has always been a melting pot for various musical styles, mainly because it stands as the last outpost of black Africa. Arabic, French, Spanish and local Malian traditions have influenced the music. After three years Keita and Manfila moved on to the (then) second most prolific group in Mali, Les Ambassadeurs, that had a more modern repertoire. The group's popularity soared and in 1978 Salif Keita was created "Minister For Music And Culture" by the president of neighbouring Guinea. In gratitude, Salif Keita composed the song "Mandjou", which was an enormous success. In the 1980s Keita dissolved Les Ambassadeurs and set out on his solo career. Since then his meaningful influence has cropped up in many areas - from western pop and rock to Pink Floyd, among others. Today, Salif Keita is one of world music's most central and influential artists; and each and every one of his albums is greeted with great expectations. In 2003 he visited the Roskilde Festival, where he gave the audience an unforgettable experience and last years release “M´Bemba” got 6 out of 6 stars by several Danish critics. They used words as “irresistible”, “keeps on growing” “a master piece” etc. In any way the concert will be a meeting with a true master.

Tickets: BilletNet +45 7015 6565 / www.billetnet.dk

About Salif Keita

Salif Keita came into the world both cursed and blessed. With each new ordeal, its salvation; with each new obstacle, some inspired ruse or unstinting strength to continue his path. And here lies the enigma. For example, how could he accept being disowned by a father who refused the inevitability of an albino son ? What reply could he give to face the hostility of his own caste when he, a Keita, chose to become a musician ? The domain he was entering was strictly forbidden to the Mandingo nobles to whom he belonged. If living means knowing how to solve paradoxes, then Salif Keita is more alive than any of us. Having black parents, but being born white; bearing both a king’s name and the burden of a beggar’s fate… those are extremely discordant experiences, capable of either destroying a soul or of making it invincible. Yet with Salif things didn’t stop there. This miraculous, wild and solitary survivor also became the most emblematic artist in a whole continent. And today, with the appearance of his new album M’Bemba, he’s established himself as the artisan of a renaissance in traditional African sounds, even though he’s spent the best part of his career elsewhere, in Europe and The United States, in search of his musical salvation. This is his destiny, and it is not a common one.

In the Sixties, when he made his debuts in the Rail Band and the Ambassadeurs, the two most influential orchestras on the local scene in Mali, African music was undergoing the greatest transformation in its entire history. Carried by the inspiration of cultural emancipation, and submitting to the outside attractions of modern trends from America and Europe, the music was changing all the more quickly due to the importing of new instruments – especially amplified guitars – and the new technology capable of recording them. Salif took to this unstable, breathtaking climate like a fish to water. His voice, a baroque, ultra-powerful organ whose muscles he’d developed chasing larks and baboons from the family’s maize crops, was already the most magnetic instrument in the country. His thirst for new horizons was insatiable. In addition, he had a taste for meeting new people. His encounter with Kanté Manfila, the guitarist from Guinea, was one of the most profitable. In 1972, it was under Manfila’s wing – he was leading the Ambassadeurs du Motel band at the time – that Salif took refuge after leaving the Rail Band, who were residents at the Buffet de la Gare in Bamako. Unlike the Rail Band, whose repertoire was made up mostly of traditional Mandingo songs, the Ambassadeurs flattered all kinds of genres, with a predilection for Cuban music even though they also favoured French and English pop, American soul, Argentinean tango or accordion-waltzes... Salif suckled at all of those breasts. He quickly grew, too quickly in a Mali where he was already beginning to feel cramped. In 1979, still with Manfila, he went into exile in Abidjan – then the hub of West African music – and recorded Mandjou, the first Mandingo hit of the modern era. He then went to Washington, where Manfila and Salif produced Primpin, a song whose words were as scandalous (‘alcohol’ and ‘drugs’ were in the lyrics!) as the sound was revolutionary. It was an absolute smash hit. The renegade became a star, and in 1987 his album Soro established the Afro Pop concept. Four years later, Amen, with appearances by Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Carlos Santana, showed how perfectly Salif had become acclimatised in the land of contemporary music’s great mammals.

“My approach to rock, jazz or soul was a necessity. For someone self-taught like me, playing with Carlos Santana or Joe Zawinul meant rapid progress. Today, that’s what allows me to play the music of my country with more control, more assurance and depth,” says Salif, with pragmatism. It’s true that, since Moffou in 2002, a second career has begun for him. This new record, where he renews acquaintances with his old accomplice Kanté Manfila, also marks the beginning of his association with producer Jean Lamoot; the latter has worked with Noir Désir and Alain Bashung, and his new approach, linking traditional and modern acoustics, was a determinant factor in the recording’s success. Certified gold in France, Moffou in fact anticipated the renaissance of classical Mandingo music and its major instruments, like the lute called the ngoni, or the balafon (an ancestral xylophone) and the percussion instrument called a calabash, all mandatory ingredients in any West African production today. Titles like Madan or Moussolou also forged a new aesthetic in which the contemporary sound-environment sublimates the original textures, no longer overwhelming them as so often in the past. And yet Moffou represented only one step in this achievement; it sketched a return to Salif’s roots, and this return is only now put into full effect with M’Bemba, the first of all his albums to be recorded in Mali, in the very studio that Salif had built for himself at home in Bamako. It’s an important detail when you consider the force with which the light, the colours and the scents of the country can impregnate things. Jean Lamoot is in charge, and there are some of the musicians featured on the previous album, like percussionist Mino Cinélu or guitarist Jean-Louis Solans. Among the most loyal of the faithful, and also on board, are Kanté Manfila, the guitarist Djelly Moussa Kouyaté, the kamele ngoni player Harouna Samaké and, last but not least, Ousmane Kouyaté, the legendary guitarist from the Ambassadeurs band at the end of the 70’s. A genuine ark of sound, M’Bemba provides a change of scenery right from the beginning, with the rare sounds of the simbi, a lute played by hunters, on the astonishing Moriba. It makes your hair stand up with two “tradi-funk” pieces, Yambo and Dadjani, the latter entwined around an inflexible loop played on a hurdy-gurdy, the same instrument as that used in the folk-music of Brittany or the Auvergne region in France. Over a spectrum of tones that is broader than on the previous album, nothing is neglected, from the slight notes of the flute to the abrupt, broad roundness of the bass. Three voices join forces on Laban to urge the tune on in the same direction, bringing Salif to declare: “Dance is the difference between Moffou and M’Bemba. And daring.” M’Bemba is the most traditional of these ten new titles, and it is daring because of the summons sent out to the cream of Mali’s Griot musicians, among them the kora master Toumani Diabaté and ngoni player Mama Sissoko. A M’Bemba is an ‘old one’, the grandfather called on – in spirit – by Salif as a witness to the intolerance and lack of generosity shown by a part of traditional Mandingo society – particularly towards Salif Keita. It’s hardly surprising to find his foster-sisters Maimouna, Salimata and Diarra Keita involved in this family matter: they decorate the house with shimmering vocal garlands. It is in this way that Salif Keita, the rebel and taboo-breaker, the one cursed for infringing the laws of his caste, has returned to the terrain of his adversaries: tradition. Quite apart from the fact that this is a sumptuous demonstration of the vocal artistry of the Griots, M’Bemba is also penetrated throughout with a symbolic power that shakes its very structure without causing it to fold, like the way the sails of a great mast welcome the wind from the open sea. This is an album smitten by liberty, the freedom of an artist who has arrived simultaneously at the maturity of his years and his art; an artist who causes his roots to speak in revisiting the works of his youth, in funk, soul and rock, with wisdom and mastery; or an artist dancing one or two steps with an ex-mistress, Cuban music, on the delicate tune Tu vas me manquer. But also an artist who can cause his anger to explode, or pour out tenderness, or dare to admit he is happy, in love or hurt (Bobo, Dery). Not to mention being more alive than he ever was before. M’Bemba is the work of an artist who has been singularly mistreated by life without ever falling into resignation; for thirty-five years he has been striving to make peace with himself, and create unity, to solve his paradoxes: an artist declaring, with the immense sincerity that has always been with him, that this has finally been achieved.

Sergio Mendes with Band

Saturday July 8, 20.00

If people have heard only two Brazilian songs they are likely to be ‘The Girl from Ipanema’, and ‘Mas Que Nada’ as played by Sergio Mendes and his band Brazil 66. Mendes largely invented what many have come to associate with the quintessentially Brazilian sound – upbeat, jazzy, lost in an eternal beachside summer and sung in a soft sensual female voice. Alongside Getz and Gilberto, Mendes was the foremost of the early popularisers of Bossa Nova and Samba in the 1960s and 1970s. After some quiet years with no recording activity, Mendes began working with will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas and this collaboration eventually led to last year’s release “Timeless” where the well-known Mendes-universe of classic Brazilian and bossa nova beats has been updated with a very cool mix of hip-hop and R&B soul.

For most of the second half of the '60s, Sergio Mendes was the top-selling Brazilian artist in the United States, charting huge hit singles and LPs that regularly made the Top Five. His records with his group Brasil '66 regularly straddled the domestic pop and international markets in America, getting played heavily on AM radio stations, both rock and easy listening, and he gave his label, A&M, something to offer light jazz listeners beyond the work of the company's co-founder, Herb Alpert. During this period, he also became an international music star and one of the most popular musicians in South America.

Born the son of a physician in Niteroi, Brazil, Sergio Mendes began studying music at the local conservatory while still a boy, with the intention of becoming a classical pianist. Mendes was living in Rio de Janeiro as the bossa nova craze hit in the mid- to late '50s, and at age 15, he abandoned classical music in favor of bossa nova. Mendes began spending time with other young Brazilian musicians in Rio de Janeiro, absorbing the musical ferment around him in the company of such figures as Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto. Their company was augmented by the periodic visits of American jazz giants such as Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Byrd, Paul Winter, Roy Eldridge, and Herbie Mann. Mendes became the leader of his own group, the Sexteto Bossa Rio, and was heard with them by many visiting musicians. He made his first recording, Dance Moderno, in 1961 on the Philips Records label. By 1962, Mendes and his band were playing at Birdland in New York in an impromptu performance with Cannonball Adderley (who was officially on the bill). Mendes and Adderley cut an album together for Capitol Records that was released later that year.

His early music, represented on albums like Bossa Nova York and Girl From Ipanema, was heavily influenced by Antonio Carlos Jobim, on whose recording Mendes worked. Mendes liked what he had found on his visit to New York and in 1964, he moved to the United States, initially to play on albums with Jobim and Art Farmer, and formed Brasil '65 the following year. The group recorded for Capitol without attracting too much notice at first. In 1966, however, Mendes and his band -- renamed Brasil '66 -- were signed to A&M Records and something seemed to click between the group and its audience.

The group, consisting in its first A&M incarnation of Mendes on keyboards, Bob Matthews on bass, Jao Palma on the drums, Jose Soares as percussionist, Lani Hall (aka Mrs. Herb Alpert and A&M's co-founder) on vocals, and Janis Hansen on vocals, was successful upon the release of its first album for the label, with its mix of light jazz, a bossa nova beat, and contemporary soft pop melodies. Their self-titled debut LP rose to number six nationally, propelled by the presence of the single "Mas Que Nada." Their second album, Equinox, yielded a trio of minor hits, "Night and Day," "Constant Rain (Chove Chuva)," and "For Me," but their third, Look Around, rose to number five behind a number three single of the group's cover of the Beatles' "Fool on the Hill," and an accompanying hit with "Scarborough Fair," based on the Simon & Garfunkel version of the folk song. Crystal Illusions, from 1969, featured a version of Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" and the hit single "Pretty World." Depending upon one's sensibilities, these covers -- especially "Fool on the Hill" and "Scarborough Fair" -- were either legitimate internationalized pop versions of the originals, or they were "elevator music."

During this period, Mendes also made several recordings for Atlantic Records separate from his A&M deal, principally aimed at a light jazz audience, and several of them in association with Jobim. Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Hubert Laws, and Claire Fisher were among the jazz figures who appeared on these records, which never remotely attracted the same level of interest or sales as his records with Brasil '66. Mendes successfully walked a fine line between international and domestic audiences for most of the late '60s until the end of the decade. Ye-Me-Le was notably less successful than its predecessors, and its single "Wichita Lineman" was only a minor hit. Mendes seemed to lose his commercial edge with the turn of the decade, and his next two A&M albums: Stillness, a folk-based collection that contained covers of Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning" and Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth," and Primal Roots, an album of traditional Brazilian music, failed to make any impression on the charts whatsoever.

The group moved to the much smaller Bell Records label in 1973, and then Mendes jumped to Elektra for his first official solo album, Sergio Mendes. He re-launched his recording career two years later with Sergio Mendes & Brasil '77 to little avail, and then, after a five year layoff from the public eye, Mendes returned to A&M in 1982. His 1983 comeback album, Sergio Mendes, was his first Top 40 album in nearly a decade and a half, and was accompanied by his biggest chart single ever, "Never Gonna Let You Go," which hit number four. Since then, Mendes has had limited chart success with the single "Alibis" and the LP Confetti. He remained a popular figure internationally, even when his record sales slumped in America, as evidenced by the fact that his entire A&M catalog (and much of his Atlantic work) from the '60s has been reissued on CD in Japan. Indeed, his popularity in the rest of the world, versus America, was even the basis for a comic vignette in one episode of the television series Seinfeld. During the '90s, Mendes performed with a new group, Brasil '99, and more recently, Brasil 2000, and has been integrating the sounds of Bahian hip-hop into his music. In 1997, A&M's British division released a remastered double-CD set of the best of Mendes' music from his first seven years on the label.

~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide

Anmeldelse af Sergio Mendes: Timeless (Concord/Hear Music)
Rating: 6

US release date: 14 February 2006
UK release date: 3 April 2006

By Mike Heyliger

It’s been done so much over the past decade or so that it’s starting to become a cliché. Aging artist who still has “it” (talent and musical ability) but doesn’t still have “it” (commercial appeal) teams with a series of younger artists and makes (or tries to make) an album that restores their popularity. The thing is, though: this plan doesn’t usually work. For every Supernatural by Santana, there’s a million artistically bankrupt tries at the same thing-like uh, Santana’s last two albums.

The latest artist to receive this treatment is Brazilian keyboardist Sergio Mendes. Mendes reached the height of his popularity in the mid-’60s, when the cool, lounge-y songs (including Beatles & Simon & Garfunkel covers) recorded with the combo Brasil ‘66 led to his being one of the first Latin American music superstars. Sergio’s still been working all this time, but he hasn’t been near a Top 40 chart since 1983’s adult contemporary prom ballad “Never Gonna Let You Go”.

Timeless is a noble pursuit, and the guest roster is impressive, covering a who’s who of modern urban music: John Legend, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Black Thought, Justin Timberlake. However, the brain behind this project is the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am, and if you think that Mendes’ classy piano stylings would make for an awkward match with the guy responsible for writing “My Humps”, then you’re not way off base.

Actually, my issue with Will here has nothing to do with the overall production or sound of the album. He and Mendes do a good job staying true to Sergio’s original style, while adding just a few modern touches: a little light turntable scratching here, some drum machines there, a bit of sampling (mostly from Mendes’ own records-although the “Funky Drummer” loop buried in the Jill Scott collaboration “Let Me” is excellent). I would have been perfectly content with this album had Will just played the back. Unfortunately, the guy (who, in terms of MC skills, is somewhere between MC Hammer and Carmen Electra) ruins nearly half of the album (he appears on seven of its 15 tracks) with his atrocious rapping. I suppose it could be worse. He could have had all the OTHER Black Eyed Peas rhyming on every other song. Maybe he should have let the badly missed Pharoahe Monch (who rips it on the Timberlake-written, war-themed “Loose Ends") rhyme a little more and we could have called it a draw.

Let’s go back to that Jill Scott song for a minute. Scott, one of the finest vocalists of this generation, gives a sublime, Billie Holiday-esque reading of the seductive ballad “Let Me”. After Scott’s first verse, Will barges in with an idiotic sing/rap. It’s akin to having a lovely floral display, then having a buzz saw come in and chop all your flowers to pieces.

Not to say there’s nothing to enjoy here. “Please Baby Don’t” pits the classy John Legend against some fine Rhodes work by Mendes. The song is reminiscent of both Bacharach and David’s mildly Latin-ized ‘60s work and Stevie Wonder’s occasional experiments with Latin music. Stevie himself shows up on “Berimbau/Consolacao”, with one of the more fun and playful performances I’ve heard from anyone in a while—and the man does it all on harmonica, not singing a word. The album’s title track proves that while India.Arie still overdoes it a bit on the “love everybody"/hippie chick thing, she’s got a vocal style to be reckoned with. Equally appealing are experiments with dancehall reggae ("Bananeira", with Mr. Vegas) and a samba/reggaeton/hip-hop en Espanopl hybrid ("Samba Da Bencao” featuring Marcelo).

That shortlist of highlights proves that Timeless had the capability to be an exceptional album. However, someone mistakenly told Will that his talent deserved to be showcased more than the other guest artists on this album, and it winds up turning what could have been a fantastic genre cross-pollination experiment into a slightly better than average album almost ruined by a guy who needs someone to tell him to stay on the other side of the microphone a little more.

TONY ALLEN: LAGOS NO SHAKING

New release by Mr Afrobeat

Tony Allen grew up surrounded by rhythm: the local palm-wine and juju sounds loved by his motor mechanic father, and the pan-African, big-band highlife then sweeping the clubs of Africa, exemplified by the great Ghanaian bandleader E. T. Mensah. The young Tony developed an obsession with drums. But opportunities to get near a kit were few and far between in 1950s Lagos.

He made his professional debut at the age of 18, while working as a radio technician, playing claves with Sir Victor Olaiya, self-styled Evil Genius of Highlife and his Cool Cats. When the regular drummer left, Tony was handed the sticks. He went on honing his technique with Negu Morris & the Heatwaves, the Nigerian Messengers and the Western Toppers Highlife Band; his role models Art Blakey and the brilliant Ghanaian drummer Guy Warren aka Koffi Ghanaba.

Then, in 1964, Tony was invited to audition for a band called Koola Lobitos, led by a young Nigerian just returned from music studies in London, named Fela Kuti. Fela’s influence on the young drummer was incalculable. But then so was Tony’s on Fela. Here was exactly the musician Fela had been looking for: capable of fusing jazz and highlife sensibilities and sounding, as Kuti put it, ‘like five drummers at once’. If Fela was afrobeat’s mind and mouth, Tony Allen was its arms and legs, his webs of cascading off-beats endlessly powering the music forward.

Allen split with Fela in 1978, citing the bandleader’s lack of care for his musicians. He relocated to Paris in 1980, involving himself in an amazing diversity of collaborative projects over the succeeding decades, as well as solo albums such as ‘Black Voices’ and ‘Home Cooking’, on which he has characteristically reached across boundaries to kindred musical spirits, be they Blur’s Damon Albarn or rapper Ty.

But now, finally, Tony has returned to what’s central, with an album that is both a definitive personal statement and a landmark in the development of afrobeat. Recorded over 10 all-night sessions in the edgily groovy Ikeja district, ‘Lagos No Shaking is the first Lagos-recorded album on which Tony has had complete artistic freedom. But it is also a truly collaborative work, which draws on the city’s diverse musical traditions and brings together several generations of Lagosian musical talent. It’s released on the label Honest Jons, licensed for world-wide distribution by EMI.

Key among the veterans is the extraordinary 76 year-old palm-wine crooner Fatai Rolling Dollar, who adds his throatily commanding tones and throbbing agidigbo thumb piano to four tracks. From Fela’s classic Afrika 70 and Egypt 80 line-ups, saxmen Baba Ani and Show Boy add that essential deep-blasting horn undertow. Another standout guest talent is the amazing Yoruba soul woman Yinka Davies. Earthily lilting on the heartstopping ‘Morose’, she lashes out with Fela-like venom on ‘Losun’.

Then, just as you’re wondering where Davies and Rolling Dollar have been hiding, Tony unleashes a brace of upcoming talents who demonstrate the musical vibrancy of Lagos today. Omololu Ogunleye brings a more modern, r&b flavour to ‘Aye Le’, ‘Ogogoro’ and ‘Moyege’, the sweetness of his singing offset by the fabulous rough grain of the horns. Muritala Adisa adds touches of ewe, a form of spoken praise-singing, rooted in ancent Yoruba tradition.

But the key element is, of course, Tony Allen’s powerful, yet magnificently relaxed drumming, which keeps everything in perpetual rocking motion, while tempering the hard funk edges of classic afrobeat with earthier Lagosian flavours. Indeed, while the album’s observations on Lagos life can be tough and sardonic, as this challenging city absolutely demands, this is a warmer, more down-home, perhaps a more humane album than anything Fela ever produced.

‘Lagos No Shaking’ - Lagos is on form, Lagos is solid, says the title, and on ‘Awa Na Re’, Fatai Rolling Dollar sings the praises of a city that has been much reviled, not least by its own inhabitants. ‘Lagos is a fantastic place,’ he sings over rolling traditional percussion. ‘In Lagos you can get whatever you want.’ ‘Ilsa Nla’ maintains the upbeat feel with its talk of a ‘dream ticket, a fantastic job’, while Lolu’s ‘Moyege’ thanks his parents for a good upbringing and the freedom he feels when he stays with them. ‘Ole’, Lazy, and ‘Ogogoro’, an ode to the local gin, complete with drunken discussion between wife and husband, warn of the dangers of hanging around in bars. Yinka Davies strikes a more contentious note on ‘Morose’, bemoaning the grim expressions of the people of Lagos, while ‘Losun’ lambasts the ‘inexpressiveness’ of African men with a frankness that will undoubtedly inspire controversy in Nigeria. But, hell, this wouldn’t be afrobeat without a degree of provocation!

‘Lagos No Shaking’ is a spectacular homecoming for Tony Allen, an acerbic, warts-and-all love letter to the city that gave him life in rhythm.

 
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