Editors' Picks
The Very Best: Warm Heart Of Africa
Album of The Month: October 2009.
The evolution of afro-pop in the "western" world has been a slow one. It's been 13 years since Paul Simon's Graceland first burst on the scene and made the sounds of Africa accessible to even the very whitest of us (I can remember dancing around barefoot to "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes" completely in love with the sound).
But it really wasn't until Vampire Weekend exploded in 2008 that a new generation fell for the global sound of Columbia University prepsters singing reggae tinged afro-pop with an indie rock flare. When you add in the success of Sri Lankan phenom M.I.A. and the Soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire, you could argue we've been on the cusp of a new love affair with World Music for a few years now, albeit one that for some reason didn't feel entirely authentic to me.
And so it begs the question, are we really ready to take the next step?
Thanks to a trio who call themselves, not modestly, The Very Best, I'm gonna say a resounding yes! Johan Karlberg, Esau Mwamwaya and Etienne Tron reside in London but hail from Sweden, Malawi and France respectively and their debut album Warm Heart Of Africa is one of the best albums of 2009.
Karlberg and Tron have worked together in London for several years as the globetrotting DJ and Production duo known as Radioclit and with Secousse, a monthly roving pop-up night club that focuses almost entirely on indigenous street sounds from around the globe (the name means "shake" in French and the tribal mayhem is currently in residence at The Notting Hill Arts Club in London). The two are renowned for their ability to ferret out the most interesting snippets of sounds from all over the world, often using just the internet as their hunting grounds. They first teamed up with Esau last year for an African tinged mix-tape of covers and remixes that was released free to the world on-line and has had more than 300,000 downloads to date, including this remix of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes":
On the heals of that success, they decided to do something even more original and the result is an album of songs that build like a sonic parfait, with layer upon layer of musical influences that range from 80's synth rock (I swear a hear the faintest nod to Journey's "Don't Stop Beleivin'" on Track #2 "Chalo") to what I can only describe as Jamaican inspired G Funk on "Julia". Of course the cherry on top is the african imbued vibe that permeates every song, perhaps most notably on the title track which features non other than-you guessed it- Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend.
Some will look at the title of this album and think it's a pure African play. It's not. What it represents is perhaps a new higher plane in music- one where technology, community, the past and the present all begin to inhabit the same space, with sounds that warm your heart and lift your spirits, no matter where you are from.
There's not much more that we can ask of music than that.
p.s. In a testament to the new 'sharing is caring', the title track has already been remixed by some of today's most interesting and accomplished bands. You can listen to them on heart of africa remix/1/ Hype Machine.
The Very Best is touring now and we hear their shows are not to be missed.
Links:
The Very Best on MySpace
Secousse Club on MySpace
