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Live Review
by SaschaS
27-3-2002
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| Albarn with some Malian friends |
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Live: Damon Albarn’s Mali Music
Barbican, London
Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Some World Music and cyber cross-pollination happened in the concrete jungle
It used to be a norm for a band to play their songs live before recording them but that time is long gone and when it is a collaboration of this kind, it might have benefited the eve if people got familiar with the ‘Mali Music’ disc. Anyhow, Damon Albarn (he of Blur and Gorillaz repute) decided to play this concert in the OnlyConnect series several weeks ahead of the album’s release.
Around the millennium celebrations, Oxfam’s education project On the Line took Damon Albarn to Mali in West Africa, to investigate the country’s rich and diverse music scene. Albarn spent a week in the country’s capital Bamako and the villages of Kela, meeting blues singer and guitarist Lobi Traore, kamele ngoni player Ko Kan Ko Sata Doumbia, griot Kasse Mady Diabate and kora master Toumani Diabate (missing tonight). Two years later he is reunited with many of these musicians for this unique world premiere, among them the haunting voice and guitar of Afel Bocoum.
Whilst there Damon recorded the ‘Mali Music’ album due to be the first release on Honest Jon’s label. Time in between has been spent in London, finishing off the project: Damon invested a year in a studio time to mix in lo-fi studio sounds. The melange is a roughish mixture of roots reggae and afrobeat percussions, modern sounds, odd effects, certainly coming together of the opposing cultural values.
Albarn and the cast of musicians (six part-time Gorillaz, 8 Malians) led by Bocoum delivered a set that was hesitant, sounded under-rehearsed and brimming with nerves. When the music hit its stride, alike on the concluding ‘Sunset Coming On’, it floated around evoking a lot of associations that might have nothing to do with the title. It created a curious sensation of familiar and informative moulded into something rather intriguing. At times it did sound like Gorillaz gone global but that was just in passing.
Rock and World music have been coming together for a while, ever since George Harrison ventured into India, then Paul Simon did a decent crossover job back in the mid-1980s, but this evening of ‘Mali Music’ sounded much more contemporary. The reception was enthusiastic considering that no-one really knew these cuts.
Damon was taking a rather reduced role in the proceedings, which must have been liberating as the Blur frontman appeared to enjoy the role of not being in control… Very nice diary-cum-field recordings that have captured the sense and art of collaboration. Relaxing evening with a pleasant, if uneven, ‘soundtrack’.
SaschaS
27-3-2002
Damon Albarn’s album ‘Mali Music’ is released 16 April on Honest Jon’s (Records, Tapes & CDs)
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