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 […]