Rokia Traore has changed direction at one time again, with dramatic results. In the five age since her last album, Bowmboi, she has toured the US celebrating the life of Billie Holiday, and written a new work - an African response to the life of Mozart - for the maverick director Peter Sellars. Now comes an intriguing, advanced and often intimate set that is quite unlike any of the other great music Mali has produced. Many of the songs are built around her subtle and bluesy electric-guitar sour, but likewise make utilisation of the classical western harp and African ngoni, though no longer the balafon. The result is an delicately recorded set that manages to sound contemporary but still distinctively African. It's remarkable by and large because of the quality and image of her singing, which can be quietly slinky and personal, rousing, as well as breathy. The songs are mostly in Bambara, with two in French and one in English - a wildly individual treatment of the Gershwin classical The Man I Love, that starts as a brooding lay and ends as a scat cipher. Traore has become the experimental prima donna of Africa.
More information
