Tremendous Effort for Dee Dee!
Although Africa is an immensely musical continent, Mali enjoys a prominent place on the musical map because of artists like Salif Keita and Toumani Diabete, through whom I’ve also become acquainted with Malinese instruments and melodies. I love the sound of the kora, a guitar-type instrument, which has the effect of taking me back to earth and simple mother nature everytime I listen to it. I also love jazz.
But.. I like very few fusion albums because to me, different styles embody different philosophies and usually an artist will resort to producing a fusion album when he or she runs out of original ideas - just because at the superfluous level the sound is intriguing enough to cobble together 45 or so minutes of music, but the result is a strangely hollow experience, because most fusion music loses the appeal of both types of music when mixed together.
To produce a good fusion album it’s important not to lose that essence and stay true to the music being blended. In fact, more energy and thought will need to go into the album (rather than less).
So when you listen to ‘Red Earth’, you will get what I mean. This is an album which has been thought through and through and as a result it stands up as a proper jazz album and also as an african album. No mean feat especially as Dee Dee Bridgewater, an American jazz singer, is properly matched against proper Malinese singers (like Diabete) and made most of the recordings in Mali itself. I fully agree with the review given to it by Guardian Newspaper. Wonderful!
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