journal.nonesuch.com

Orchestra Baobab to Appear Live on KPFA's "Music of the World" Today

Orchestra Baobab kicked off their US tour in support of their latest album, Made in Dakar, last night at Yoshi's in San Francisco and will play at the club's Oakland venue tomorrow night. Today, at 11 AM PST (2 PM EST), the band will appear live on the listener-supported Berkeley radio station KPFA, 94.1 FM, program Music of the World.

Fans around the world can tune in live at kpfa.org.

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San Francisco Examiner's Derk Richardson understatedly suggests that "there would be a lot less meaningful ways" to spend one's hard-earned money than "to spring for the new Baobab CD, Made in Dakar, or ... to see this phenomenal band when it plays live in the Bay Area over the next several nights."

The band, with its Afro-Cuban roots, is in good company with its label mates in the Buena Vista Social Club, and then some. Baobab, says Richardson,

has enough Cuban feel to please fans of the late Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Ibrahim Ferrer, plus there's lead guitarist Barthélemy Attisso unraveling solos that rival B.B. King, Peter Green and Carlos Santana for fluid emotional expression, and original singer/percussionists Balla Sidibe and Rudy Gomis as well as Wolof singer Ndiouga Dieng ... casting indelible vocal spells and inducing ecstatic swoons.

Read the article at examiner.com.

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Spinner.com's Steve Hochman spoke with Attiso, the band's guitarist, about how life has changed for the band since their early days in the 1970s, when they first came together and were "key in the development of West African music," in Hochman's words. As the writer sees it:

On the new album, the rumba lilt is as persuasive and seductive as ever, woven with the various shades of Afrobeat, and Attisso's guitar retains the distinctive fluid sting that was crucial to the old recordings. And throughout there is a sense of deep appreciation for both past and present successes and the people who have been parts of that.

Read the interview at spinner.com.

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The Christian Science Monitor's Stephen Humphries examines the rise in popularity in the US and Europe of the music of West Africa. Writes Humphries:

West Africa may be one of the poorest regions in the world but it boasts a natural resource of astonishing wealth: its music. In recent years, the aural riches of Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Gambia have been gaining currency in America and Europe through several ambassadors.

Including among those the Monitor cites in this group: Orchestra Baobab, Amadou & Mariam, Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangare, and Toumani Diabate.

To read the article, visit csmonitor.com.

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The Monitor's Norman Weinstein reviews two new records from that set of West African luminaries: Orchestra Baobab's Made in Dakar and Diabate's The Mandé Variations.

"Named after a sturdy African tree with healing properties," writes Weinstein of Orchestra Baobab, "this 11-piece Senegalese band proves as life-affirming as its namesake." The band, he says, "uncannily merge Caribbean rhythms, American soul mannerisms, and Congolese dance styles into a spectacular display of brash virtuosity."

In trying to conceptualize the unique artis that is Toumani Diabate, Weinstein suggests imagining a kora player who "listens carefully to Jimi Hendrix, UB40's reggae-rock, blues, and flamenco" then "invents a technique of playing bass lines and melodic embellishments that suggest hearing two or more musicians simultaneously." What Diabate has created from such an undertaking on The Mandé Variations:

An astonishing tour de force: a solo kora recital of exquisite delicacy, breathtaking improvisational skill, and elegiac stateliness.

Those reviews can also be found at csmonitor.com.

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Click here to add Orchestra Baobab's Made in Dakar CD now for $16 and download the album MP3s, including the exclusive Nonesuch Store bonus track, "Mamadou," at no extra charge.

Click here to add Toumani Diabate's The Mande Variations CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $16, along with the album MP3s at no additional cost.

Wilco, The Black Keys, Amadou & Mariam to Play Lollapalooza 2008

Wilco, The Black Keys, Amadou & Mariam will be among the bands playing at this year's Lollapalooza festival, the event's organizers have announced. The lineup for the three-day festival, to be held at Chicago's Grant Park, August 1-3, includes more than 100 artists, including fellow headliners Radiohead, The Raconteurs, Nine Inch Nails, and Kanye West. To see the complete lineup and for more information on Lollapalooza 2008, visit lollapalooza.com.

You can also read the Billboard magazine Q&A with Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney of The Black Keys on their new album, Attack & Release, and with the record's producer, Danger Mouse (whose band, Gnarls Barkley, headlines at Lollapaolooza as well), at billboard.com.

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Click here to add the Attack & Release CD directly to your Shopping Cart for $13 and download the album MP3s at no additional charge.

LA Times: Amadou & Mariam's "Dimanche à Bamako" Is One of Century's Sunniest

In an effort to expand the musical palate of Vampire Weekend fans newly taken to the sounds of Afro-pop, which the band references in its work, the Los Angeles Times offers some "relatively recent gems" from Africa's diverse musical offerings. Included is Amadou & Mariam's Manu Chao-produced album Dimanche à Bamako, which the Times' Ann Powers says "ranks as one of the sunniest musical outings released this century." She writes: "Some tracks boogie like classic rock, others roll along on those gloriously languorous Malian rhythms, some flirt with hip-hop. Every one will make you jump up and dance."

And, the article concludes, "that's just the tiniest foray into African pop—we didn’t even mention such obvious notables as Vieux Farka Toure [Ali Farka Toure's son], Orchestra Baobab, Youssou N'Dour, and Rokia Traore."

For the complete article, visit theguide.latimes.com.

Guardian Names 1,000 Must-Hear Albums (Part 1: A-M)

With iPods now holding up to 160 gigabytes of your favorite music, it might not be such a bad idea to start thinking of the 1,000 or so albums you just can't live without. Or, as the Guardian (UK) has put it, the 1,000 albums you must hear before you die. All this week, the Guardian is revealing, day by day, the records its music team thinks are must-hears "before you shuffle off your mortal coil."

Out so far on the list, released alphabetically by artist, are groups A through M. Here's some of what the Guardian's music mavens had to say about the Nonesuch albums they included:

• Amadou & Mariam: Dimanche à Bamako (2005) "This husband-and-wife rhythm and blues pairing from Mali were already huge in France before they added even more sparkle by hiring Manu Chao as producer. A sublimely paced record of pedal-to-the-metal acceleration and relaxed, freewheeling charm."

• Laurie Anderson: Big Science (1982, r. 2007) "Her dry humour, abrasive instrumentation and technological obsessions sound as current as ever: 'So hold me Mom, in your long arms. In your petrochemical arms. Your military arms. In your electronic arms.'"

• Buena Vista Social Club: Buena Vista Social Club (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 1997) "A bunch of elderly Cubans were unlikely candidates to displace Portishead as the dinner party soundtrack du jour but, with Ry Cooder's patronage ... the power and charm of its protagonists ensured theirs was a long-told tale ..."

• Brian Eno & David Byrne: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981, r. 2006) "Underloved at the time but hugely cherished since, this album sees Byrne and Eno travel into the heart of darkness, their art-rock fuelled and flavoured by African percussion, Egyptian pop singers and samples of crabby radio DJs and a real-life exorcism. An experiment, but utterly absorbing nonetheless."

• Ali Farka Touré: Savane (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2006) "Ali Farka Touré, who died in March 2006, was the finest and best-loved African guitarist of his generation. Often described as the godfather of the desert blues, he proved through his hypnotic instrumental work and singing that the blues must have originated from his home country of Mali ... He recorded a series of classic albums, ... but this album, released after his death, is arguably his finest. That's certainly the way he saw it ...  [On this album,] he produced some of the most compelling guitar work of his career ..."

• Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2003) "Backed by Ry Cooder's dream team—the jazz bassist Cachaito, the surf-rock guitarist Manuel Galbán and the Blind Boys of Alabama on backing vocals—Ferrer's effortlessly soulful voice has never sounded better: crooning the boleros, rolling his Rs on the salsas and making staggering vocal improvisations sound as casual as clearing his throat."

• Bill Frisell: Have a Little Faith (1993) "Jazz, folk, classical, pop—like a small-town electrical store, Frisell's landmark album has it all. Made with an unusual jazz quintet that includes Guy Klucevsek's accordion, it's a kind of love letter to American music, with John Hiatt's rolling title track and tunes by Copland, Ives, Foster, Rollins, Dylan and even Madonna."

• Kronos Quartet / Pat Metheny / Steve Reich: Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint (1990) "Different Trains, with its locomotive rhythms and melodies generated by the cadences of speech, is a meditation on Reich's wartime childhood and the fate of Jews in the Holocaust; it's the composer's most moving work."

• Orlando Cachaito López: Cachaito (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2001) "Even though the Buena Vista Social Club franchise had thoroughly shaken up world music, nobody was quite ready for this sprawling, eclectic and slightly bonkers album from bassist Cachaito and producer Nick Gold, which mashes reggae, jazz, and French hip-hop with Cuba's finest."

Also on the list were Ry Cooder (Chicken Skin Music), k.d. lang (Ingénue), The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs), Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art of the Trio, Vol 4: Back at the Vanguard), and Pat Metheny (80/81).

For all the artists A through M, visit music.guardian.co.uk. Stay tuned for N through Z!

LinkTV Site Features Caetano Veloso, Amadou & Mariam Video

In this week's sparkling new 40th Anniversary edition of Rolling Stone, the magazine calls readers' attention to linktv.org/worldmusic, the international nonprofit network LinkTV 's site for on-demand streaming music videos, interviews, and documentaries on music and musicians from around the world.

Among the site's featured materials are concert footage of Malian singers Amadou & Mariam performing songs from their smash CD Dimanche à Bamako in Paris and a documentary feature that, in the words of its host, "looks at Brazil and its music through the eyes and voice of it greatest songwriter and poet, Caetano Veloso."

To watch Amadou & Mariam in concert, click here.

To see the site's documentary on Caetano, click here.