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, […]

Boston Globe, July 28, 2006 In the beginning there was a rhythm. It crossed the Atlantic with the slave trade and came to thrive in Cuba. About 70 years ago, it found its way back to Congo (etched into the grooves of Cuban 78s), where most of the Cuban slaves had come from in the […]

Boston Globe, July 14, 2006 There’s a little-known law in the music business that says that every few years, an anointed world music act seeps into the mainstream, where it becomes soundtrack material for coffee shop speed-dating events or grad-student dinner parties. Quality and shelf-life vary. The Cape Verdean doyenne Cesaria Evora, for much of […]

Boston Globe, April 5, 2006 Cesaria Evora is an icon: Her gorgeous albums of Cape Verdean morna and other Afro-Atlantic sounds are part of today’s world- music canon. At 65, she has brought the sound and sentiment of her rocky archipelago into even the sparsest CD collections. Evora plays to full houses, as she did […]

Boston Globe, March 12, 2006 “If a little tree grows under a baobab, it will die a sapling,” an African proverb says. Applied to the music world, it means that sometimes the greats are so great that their shadow leaves little room for new artists to emerge. That would seem to be the case for […]

Boston Globe, January 20, 2006 He’s been called an African Cat Stevens, which seems odd. For there’s little of the moody singer-songwriter in Daby Toure, the rising star from Mauritania who rocked Boston’s Bastille Day outdoor concert last July with a danceable, sweat-drenched set, and returns for a performance at the Somerville Theatre tonight. It’s […]

Boston Globe, November 13, 2005 Cynics, begone! For all the depredations of commercial radio and the antics of add-water-and-stir instant celebrities, music still has the power to deliver the shock of the new. And every once in a while, a band comes along to prove it. The Congolese outfit Konono No. 1, which appears at […]

Boston Globe, October 21, 2005 Although a few ubiquitous artists dominate the “world music” canon and the racks of your favorite CD megachain, African music isn’t standing still. Across the continent, young musicians are experimenting with electronica, hip-hop, reggae, jazz, and new takes on traditional forms. Just a fraction of this creative ferment finds its […]

Boston Globe, September 21, 2005 African music trends come and go. Nigerian Afrobeat and Congolese soukous, lively at home, are currently quiet on the world scene, but Senegalese hip-hop and coupe-decale from Ivory Coast are rising. Yet amid the flux, the music of Mali never goes out of style. The landlocked nation is home to […]

Boston Globe, September 14, 2005 Bostonians whose awareness of Cape Verdean music begins and ends with Cesaria Evora had the chance to expand their horizons Saturday evening when singer Lura, the rocky archipelago’s current chart- topping sensation, visited the Berklee Performance Center. Hers was a total performance. She covered styles ranging from ballads and batuku, […]