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The Syliphone Years
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Mojo, The Syliphone Years >>
Guinea's finest big band at their peak in the late '60s and '70s.
Sweeping to success on inde pendence-fuelled optimism, Bembeya Jazz were the sine qua non of Guinean music for a dozen years from the early 1960s. Africanising Cuban music, they created a template for the bands that followed (Super Rail Band, Baobab). The key was guitarist Sekou Diabate, who could mimic Havana pianists, Californian surf style or Hawaiian slide with ease, intuitively finding something new with every solo. A close second in your reasons to care is Demba Camara, one of the continent's greatest singers until his rock'n'roll demise in a car crash. The rest of the band were no slackers, the rhythm section propelling the group forcefully, the horns and backing vocalists undermining received wisdom on what brass and voices were supposed to do, always sounding as if they were improvising different tunes from the rest of the combo. The sound quality is variable, but, otherwise, just perfect.
-David Hutcheon
03/01/05
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