Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz

plays Washington Park

by Dave Singer

For the Daily Gazette

ALBANY – African music sounded good in Albany on Monday night in Washington Park.  Guinea’s Bembeya Jazz played a wonderful show to a full house as part of its North American tour.

       They opened with “Bembeya,” from their newest album.  The leader, Sekou Bembeya Diabate, nicknamed “Diamond Fingers,” earned his name on the first song with a wonderfully light but fast guitar solo.  For an African group, even for Afro-pop, Bembeya is light on percussion and heavy on guitar; last night, for example, they featured Diabate in every song.  And the crowd still wanted more of him.

       Drummer Mory Mangala Conde played straight ahead, rarely straying from the beat, counting on conga player Papa Kouyate for accents and fills, as in songs like “Sanfaran Sabou” and “Mami Wati.”  The group, with a bass guitar, provided a full sound, and a trumpet and saxophone punctuated the vocals. 

       Diabate is a mesmerizing guitarist.  He never failed to take the audience on a wild guitar ride song after song.  In some ways he is the anti-guitar hero, having all the speed, confidence and antics of a western rock star, but playing softly and with great patience, at one point getting his guitar down to a whisper while picking at lightning speeds. 

       All singing (and any talking) by the band members was done in their native languages.  Despite the language barrier, each member continued to talk between songs.  Diabate often yelled “Merci beaucoup,” and at least twice asked, “You happy?” He also shouted African chants to the full house, getting the audience to imitate each chant.

       Bembeya Jazz dates back to the early 1960s, when Guinea gained its independence.  The new government funded and promoted Bembeya Jazz to celebrate the country’s new identity by replacing the colonized music with native African rhythms.  After nearly two decades of playing for Guinea with great success, the country suffered great economic difficulty and the band broke up.

       In 1998 “Diamond Fingers,” living in Paris, returned home for a reunion that eventually led to the recording of “Bembeya” in 2002, the group’s first album in 15 years.

       Throughout the night people filled the area in front of the stage to dance, packing it tightly so that from the top of the hill the group looked like one unit bobbing up and down to the West African rhythms. 

       The show started with an open drum circle, led by the Hamilton Hill Arts Center.  Drum circles are free-for-all percussion jams played by anyone who has a drum.  Last night the circle began in chaos, then leaders quickly emerged, individual patterns started to merge into others until the circle became musical.  Dancers popped out occasionally to join the fray.  Inevitably the beat sped up, as happens in most circles, and ended much faster than it started.