Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
|
Product Description
Review
Arriving in a remarkable series of sleeve photographs showing her mud-stained, chained and wearing macabre make-up, this attractively eclectic collection is another key step in Gnahoré's seemingly remorseless rise into the front line of West African music since being shortlisted for the Best Newcomer gong at BBC Radio 3's World Music Awards in 2006. Her persuasively innocent vocals are particularly effective on the mournful balladry that occupies much of the album and reaches a zenith on the pained fragility of Mouziguie. But she can be hair-raising, too, when she lets rip on slow-burner Samahani, the dramatic Beussem and the celebratory Cote d'Ivoire, impressively driven along by the pumping Gangbé Brass Band as she seeks to merge African roots with the European influence of her French guitarist, partner and co-writer Colin Laroche de Féline.
A deceptively simple stylist, she still finds a way of fully inhabiting her material as great vocalists always do, but–befitting a songwriter, percussionist and dancer as well as singer–there are several upbeat, rhythmic dance-fuelled arrangements and catchy melodies to offset the album's essential melancholia. South African star Vusi Mahlasela (duetting powerfully on the mellifluous Kokpa) is one of four featured guest vocalists providing a more knowing contrast to Dobet's guileless singing, with fellow Ivorian Soum Bill taking centre stage on the album's most bruising arrangement, Evigne. Her father, Boni Gnahoré–a well-known percussionist in his own right–adds a more elemental edge to a genuinely pan-African music drawn from and inspired by the city of Abidjan's multi-cultural heritage.
The voice and key instrumentation is sometimes too low in the mix to make a fully potent strike, the upbeat stuff isn't as joyously unrestrained as it perhaps should be and there are even worrying lulls when the album seems to drift inconclusively. Yet when her gorgeous voice does cut through and her personality shines to such magical effect, you imagine more awards will tumble her way.
--Colin Irwin
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
Review
This ambitious set from Ivorian singer and dancer Dobet Gnahoré looks outward from her corner of west Africa to the whole continent. Her collaborator, Colin Laroche de Feline, sets the instantly-memorable songs amid guitar parts that conjure up South Africa on Kokpa , with Vusi Mahlasela s silvery voice shimmering behnd Gnahoré s, or Senegal with the djembe ricochet of Nfeloun , or frame the double-speed sabar erupting out of the jazzy piano of Beussem . Benin s Gangbé Brass Band punch through the snare drum tattoo on Cote D Ivoire . FIVE STARS --Financial Times
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Customer Reviews
This one's not quite as good but OK.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
