Thank You (For Talking To Me Africa) - Page 2

Before the show, I shared a cab with record producer and Hannibal label owner Joe Boyd, who asked me about African music and what I thought about it. I mentioned Ali Farka Touré, Johnny Clegg, Fela Kuti and a few others before bringing up Angelique Kidjo, who had just released her pop-inflected album Oremi the previous year. Boyd looked at me quizzically and said, "you like that? That speaks to you?" I admitted that it didn't really, it just sounded nice, and he told me that someday, smart kid that I was, I would figure it out, I would get it.

Later that night, I got it.

I bring all this up not because Ali Farka Touré has a new album out but because I was reminded of him and his effect on me today by another group drawing on West African traditions. Called "Fula Flute," after a particular style of flute playing native to the Fulani people of Guinea in which the player sings into the flute as he plays, they have been playing east coast dates over the past couple of years. (The group is composed of a Canadian, a jazz-trained New York bassist, several Malian griots (roughly, hereditary storytellers/bards/historians), and Bailo Bah, the Fuilani flutist.) Working on a smaller scale than the larger than life Ali Farka Touré, Fula Flute showcase a nearly-extinct and deeply enthralling folk tradition that (like so many nearly dead folk traditions), begs for a wider audience. I'm on their mailing list, and was notified today that they have a nifty video out in Quicktime which showcases both the Fula flute style and the rolling percussion typical of West African music. Good, interesting, unusual, and beautiful. They've got it.

(Also posted to the Ministry of Minor Perfidy.)

Article Author: John Owen

John Owen is a music writer, multi-instrumentalist and music industry veteran based in coastal Massachusetts.

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