ROKIA TRAORE
Bowmboi
Indigo
· Kronos Quartet underline Malian singer's originality.
I've been waiting for this album for over a decade, ever since Pierre Akendengue's Lambarena and the Pan African Orchestra's Opus 1 demonstrated how beautifully African and European classical and art-song traditions could mesh.
Rokia Traore was never as traditional a musician as her better-known compatriots, Ali Farka Toure or Oumou Sangare, although their shared heritage is obvious. Traore sticks to acoustic instruments for her accompaniment, but it's not really folk music – a childhood abroad with diplomat parents has given her a subtle but undeniably modernist edge.
Neither is this avant-garde. The participation of the Kronos Quartet on this, her third album, doesn't so much take her in new directions as it clarifies the distance she has already travelled. There is an arresting clarity to her songwriting and while the 11 songs on this album are often well over the six-minute mark, she manages to convey a sense of exceptional restraint and simplicity on even the most exuberant tracks.
Her voice, which is the music's natural centre, is not of itself as memorable as that of world-music divas such as Virginia Rodriguez or Cesaria Evora, but it conveys a youthful self-confidence and energetic intelligence that drives the album from start to finish.
If, at first listen, it’s the two haunting tracks to which the Kronos contribute that make the greatest impression, repeated listening quickly shows that the others, on which Traore is backed by the less-exotic combination of guitar, bass and percussion, are every bit as mesmerizing.
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