Found in the Shuffle: Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars - "Seconds"

Song: Seconds
Artist: Sierra Leone's Refugee All-Stars
Album: In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2

This has great energy. It's obviously a U2 cover, but the All-Stars completely made it their own. Best of all, they made it African without compromising the basic Western roots of the song. I wish more world music was like this.

(By the way, Bob reviewed the full album a few months ago.)

Various Artists - In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2

Label: Shout! Factory

Released: April 1, 2008

While covers are a common thing, they are also tricky. Most artists end up falling into one of two traps: They either cover the best known rendition of the song rather than just the song itself or they lose all real sense of the song's true nature. It's a tough game making the song your own while keeping what's really essential. One thing that's really great about In the Name of Love is that most of the artists navigate these difficult waters with at least some success.

I'm not suggesting that these are now the definitive versions or even that they all fully succeed, but they are interesting and worth hearing despite not supplanting U2's performances. While none of the versions here are too straightforward, a few lose too much sight of the song. Ba Cissoko's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" gets lost in its world-jazz noodling, losing the song's essence, while Keziah Jones' "One" simply drops the song into a new framework, trying to force it rather than feel its way. Other songs achieve some, but not all, of what they set out to accomplish. Cheikh Lô's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" brings amazing rhythmic variety to the song, but never quite captures the gospel roots that are so essential. While turning "Mysterious Ways" into a lighter pop song, Angelique Kidjo also gives it a more natural feel. The low-key power of "Where the Streets Have No Name" finds new energy through Tony Allen's afro-jazz spin.

While much of the album succeeds, but not fully, there are a few real gems that U2 and world music fans alike should make the effort to hear. Vieux Farka Touré keeps the seething anger of "Bullet the Blue Sky" despite departing from much of the original's structure. The percussive nature of "Seconds" naturally lent itself to Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars African rhythms even as the guitar parts crossed back over to a Western sound. While the African Underground All-Stars don't really cover "Desire" in full, their use of the song's chorus is brilliant in their hip-hop structure, making it broader and more lyrically direct than the original. The one track that makes In the Name of Love an essential listen though is "Pride (in the Name of Love)." The Soweto Gospel Choir takes the hopeful, edgy protest song and turns it into a celebration and who has greater cause to celebrate the cause of civil rights than the people of South Africa. The album is full of interesting re-interpretations, but "Pride" is the one version that needed to be done. If a song could have more than one definitive version, this would be the other.

Two other things are worth noting. First, the insert includes detail not only about each artist, but also about their country with demographic and humanitarian information. There's some quick good information about that much-neglected part of the world. Additionally, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the album benefits the Global Fund. The goodness here goes beyond the music.


Rating: 7/10

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Live: Ladysmith Black Mambazo

January 23, 2008, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore, Maryland

Everyone remembers Ladysmith Black Mambazo for their contributions to Paul Simon's Graceland, but the group, formed in the late 1950s in South Africa, has had a prolific recording career to which many people are oblivious. As an a capella group playing traditional African music, there isn't a huge market for their albums here outside of world music circles and their studio performances (without Paul Simon anyway) don't really transcend that boundary. However, seeing them live is another thing altogether.

This is the second time I've seen Ladysmith and both experiences have been...well, amazing. The power of their voices is so much more than that of a rock band with a wall of Marshalls. Joseph Shabalala, their leader and lead vocalist, still has a striking voice. The eight other singers that make up Ladysmith are so smooth that they function as one, even as individuals leave the harmony to sing other parts. Technical perfection is almost always at the expense of heart and soul, but not with Ladysmith. Theirs is a perfection that comes from within and washes over the audience in waves of beauty, hope and joy.

Their traditional dances, unlike the music, seem less perfect, more random and spontaneous, and perhaps this is what brings the very spiritual experience of hearing them sing back down to earth. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing dancers, more limber than I thought possible (and they're not all young men).

The music and dance combine not just as a cultural experience but also to bring Ladysmith's ultimate message: hope. This isn't some superficial, sugary message about a better tomorrow, it's not even so much a message as it is their very essence. This is a group formed out of the hope of people living in the townships under apartheid, the hopes of people who have lost loved ones, the hope that sustains, not the false hope of lies. It's striking to hear this hope in their music while living in a culture that's sarcastic and cynical despite being inundated with comfort and convenience. It was strange to walk out into the Baltimore night afterwards and know that the hope that sustained Ladysmith in times worse than we know in America today is missing. And that's what's killing people, perhaps more than guns and drugs. The group has a humility (and corny sense of humor), despite being international recording artists, despite being able to truly hold thousands with just their voices, that allows the music to speak their message without preaching, without complaint. There is something in Ladysmith Black Mambazo that could change us...if only we listen.

Here are a few videos, but none do them justice:

Live in 2003


With Paul Simon at Graceland - The African Concert


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Review: Zap Mama - Supermoon

Label: Heads Up International

Released: August 7, 2007

Frankly, I wasn't very familiar with Zap Mama prior to hearing the title track to this album about a month ago on my local independent radio station, WTMD. I liked the song well enough to track down the album, but once I got it, I found it to be a tough one to write about. Supermoon the album is considerably more in the world music realm than "Supermoon" the song. Since world music isn't really my thing, it was harder to write about even though I liked the album.

Supermoon continues Zap Mama's move away from sparse, nearly a capella arrangements to to a fuller sound. The album certainly puts the world into worldbeat, drawing not only on African styles, but also Cuban, reggae, jazz and r&b. At times it even takes on some elements of electronic dance music as well as a disco slickness without dropping its overall organic nature. Supermoon does have a few tracks that stand on their own, the title track in particular, but by and large it works best taken as a whole as the album tracks are not mere filler, but serve to enhance of the overall work.

If you aren't a worldbeat fan, Zap Mama may not convert you, but it will give you a very listenable opportunity to see what's happening outside in the broader world. If you are a worldbeat fan though, I suspect you'll see Supermoon as a light version of the music you love, dummied down a bit for those of us who don't understand.

Rating: 6/10

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