Boston Globe, May 20, 2012 It has been 10 years since the civil war in Sierra Leone ended. For Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, however, the war and its effects are engraved not just in the memories of the band members, but in the group’s very name. As listeners to their 2006 debut, “Living Like […]

Boston Globe, December 18, 2011 1. SUSANA BACA “Afrodiaspora’’ Soulful pedagogy from the sublime-voiced Baca, who this year was named Peru’s culture minister, and here leads a grand tour of Africa-rooted music from Latin America and the Caribbean, including New Orleans, with her customary grace and serene mastery. 2. MAMANI KEITA “Gagner l’argent français’’ A shimmering, just-right […]

Boston Globe, August 20, 2011 Four years ago a conversation with Vieux Farka Toure was a loose affair held in a kitchen in Queens while the Malian singer-guitarist and his bandmates cooked lunch amid boxes of CDs. It was Toure’s first US tour; he had a name – he is the son of the great […]

Boston Globe, July 24, 2011 There came a point, says Oumou Sangare, the great singer from Mali, when she had to finally take her own advice. A world music phenomenon since 1990, when she released her acclaimed debut album “Moussolou” at 22, Sangare had spent a decade and a half – or longer, if you […]

Boston Globe, July 15, 2011 The first time around, it was a gamble – one woman’s labor of love to make visible the Boston area’s scattered African communities and to present African music to the widest possible audience, not in pricey concert venues or out-of-the-way immigrant social halls, but free, in City Hall Plaza, on […]

Boston Globe, July 3, 2011 Discovery is a loaded term in world music. It carries the colonial connotation that the art of another culture does not really exist until an outsider – typically, a conquering outsider – comes across it, gives it a label, and delivers it to the market. And yet small acts of […]

Boston Globe, June 25, 2011 They were already big at home, in South Africa. Very big, in fact: born of a jam session on the small Cape Town scene in 2002, the seven-member Freshlyground has enjoyed, with its gently Africanized pop fusion, a string of local hit songs that convey sweetly earnest themes of uplift […]

Boston Globe, May 22, 2011 Communities that go through wrenching change often find strength in concepts they use to define themselves and claim their identity. For the Tuareg of the Sahara, that word is “ashek.” It means something like honor and dignity. It guides the Tuareg’s behavior in a world where borders and economic change […]

Boston Globe, February 25, 2011 A concert is a product, and sometimes a product is felt to require a brand name to describe it and attract audience and sales. This is often the case with tours that feature international artists who might or might not share a stage in their regions of origin. “Acoustic Africa,” […]

Boston Globe, January 7, 2011 As their makers describe it, the ideal setting to hear the duets of cellist Vincent Segal and kora player Ballake Sissoko is the one where they recorded “Chamber Music,” their slow and sumptuous album: in Bamako, Mali, deep in the night, when the heat has dropped and silence envelops the […]

Boston Globe, November 5, 2010 In the 1960s, the West African republic of Mali was newly independent and brimming with optimism. A new middle class was starting to swell in the capital, Bamako. Education and progress were in the air. And pulling crowds onto dance floors were jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and most of all, […]

Boston Globe, September 12, 2010 It’s pretty much accepted on the world-music circuit that Mali, population 13 million, always boxes above its weight. Salif Keita, Ali Farka Toure, Habib Koite, Oumou Sangare, Tinariwen, Amadou and Mariam are just some of the global superstars the West African nation has produced. It’s so rich, it’s silly. But […]

Boston Globe, June 13, 2010 On the issue that is nearest to his heart and most closely touches who he is, Salif Keita is trying a new tack: directness. As anyone who has seen him knows, Keita, the great singer from Mali and a crucial figure in modern African music, is an albino. The condition, […]

Boston Globe, March 26, 2010 One of the small indignities that African musicians face when on tour in this country is having to be rude to fellow countrymen when the breakneck road schedule leaves no time for proper courtesies. “The other day we played in Alaska, and local Malians came to see us,” says Bassekou […]

Boston Globe, December 6, 2009 It’s one thing to be born into a musical family. It’s another thing altogether to be entrusted, by birth, with guardianship of a tradition that dates to medieval times and is central to the culture and memories of an entire society. That’s the burden that Balla Kouyate, griot and virtuoso […]

Boston Globe, June 26, 2009 If nothing else, history will retain that Andre-Marie Tala sued James Brown for plagiarism – and won. It stemmed from a 1973 incident when Brown was touring in West Africa. In Cameroon, the young Tala – an emerging local singer and guitarist – handed Brown a demo copy of “Hot […]

Boston Globe, July 12, 2009 It’s a signal achievement in world music to go global – to achieve recognition and a fan following that fills arenas and festival fields in countries far and wide. But sometimes you don’t have to. Sometimes, the respect you garner at home affords you all the gigs you need, plus […]

Boston Globe, September 7, 2008 Their name means “Stars of Tradition,” but the members of Etran Finatawa are just as much cultural pioneers, melding long-separate ethnic traditions of their native Niger in the service of nationhood – and in the process, producing one of the most fascinating recent hybrids on the African music scene. The […]

Boston Globe, July 4, 2008 Seun Kuti sets himself a high standard. “In the true tradition of Afrobeat, you have to make every album like a classic,” says the Nigerian singer and bandleader. At 25, he’s the new standard-bearer of Afrobeat, the furiously groovy musical style that is one of the most beloved and distinctive […]

Boston Globe, December 8, 2007 He’s known on a first-name basis – Youssou – not just across Africa, but around the world, which is remarkable when you think about it, when you consider that Youssou N’Dour emerged in the early 1980s as just another African bandleader, wildly talented yet from a small country at the […]

Boston Globe, October 19, 2007 In the 27 years since the hard-fought overthrow of white minority Rhodesian rule, Zimbabwe has tumbled from an exalted symbol of African liberation to an exhibit of almost all that could possibly go wrong. A paranoid regime in the grip of an aging president and his cronies, and hunger and […]

Boston Globe, June 22, 2007 Chalk it up to globalization: The foremost cultural ambassador of an obscure Islamic island nation off the coast of East Africa can be found, when her schedule permits, taking the waters at a Northern California yoga and meditation spa. Such is the habit of Nawal, the singer and instrumentalist who […]

Boston Globe, February 23, 2007 NEW YORK—It isn’t customary for a 25-year-old West African musician with just one brand-new album to his name to make his American debut before a sold-out house including his nation’s ambassador, record label executives, and Harry Belafonte. But the tall young man in the grand silver-blue traditional robe wielding the […]

Boston Globe, November 10, 2006 With its 21 strings, the long West African instrument called the kora delivers a sound rich in nuance and finesse. It also requires lengthy study. Together these factors have made it a vehicle for the preservation of traditional music by griots – the praise-singing troubadours of Mali and Guinea – […]

Boston Globe, October 20, 2006 The latest success story in African music began with a challenge to fate, a gesture of humanity by a group of people who had ample reason to give up on the species instead. When the Refugee All Stars formed in the Sembakounya refugee camp in Guinea, their country, Sierra Leone, […]