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Guinea's Bembeya
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The Beat, Guinea's Bembeya >>
A brace of wonderful reissues from the golden days of African music have been gracing my ears. First up is a double cd from Guinea's Bembeya Jazz National, The Syliphone Years (Stern's). Compiled by Bembeya expert Graeme Counsel, it is a selection of their best music from the early '70s when they were producing music of mind-boggling wildness and rhymical intensity. Some of the finest Afro-Afro-Cuban music ever produced, The Syliphonc Years also features loads of tunes never released before. There are far too many wonderful moments to chronicle them all in detail but standouts include "Sabor de Guajira" with its slinky guitar that is totally out there, riffing on Planet Zog. "Armee Guineenne" has showers of rhythm that link everything together. "Dembaty Galant" is slinky smooth slow groove with wild guitar that mixes all parts of West Africa, "Air Guinee" is a mega groove, while "Guinee Hety Horemoun" sounds like Carios Santana had stepped into the recording session, but it's the usual genius Sekou Diahate playing guitar. Disc one ends wilh "Alalake" which lo my untutored ear sounds like a Bluebeat tune with Hawaiian guitar.
Disc two starts with "Beyla," its chiming guitar takes off into near space as Afrobeat horns ride the Afro-Latin riddim. "Sou" is another blast of outrageous razor-sharp guitar. But top of the pile is "N'gamokoro," 10 minutes seven seconds of demented music. The horn section opens things up with one of Bembeya's trademark complicated attention-grabbing intros. It kicks into cowbell, crazy vocals and a staccato riddirn that builds and builds. This stupendous tune moves through wah-wah guitar, trumpets, sax, a totally off-the-hook percussion solo, into nutty vocal injections, and then veers back to guitar.
"Ballake" hits us with spellbinding twangy guitar and wonderful crazy vocals, adlibbing and making it up sonero style. "Dya Dya" is what would describe as an '80s pan-Caribbean Afrosoca groove. Then with "Petit Sekou" we end disc two on a high note of fuzz guitar like a Farfisa keyboard! The music Bembeya created helps my mind to reside in a happier place. Do not neglect this cd as it reaches parts of your soul that you never knew existed and links parts of Africa and the new world from a place and period that exists at the point where Fela meets Tito Puentc and where Jerry Garcia would have been at home.
-Dave Hucker 01/01/05
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