"Yambo"

Based on his catalogue, listeners scarcely know what to expect from Mali’s moody superstar.  Will he be rocking out with Vernon Reid, covering French pop songs, trying out a new band, going acoustic?  He did the last on his previous release, Moffou (Universal 2002), and won critical acclaim as well as a Grammy nomination.  The big surprise this time is that Salif has taken more or less the same approach with more or less the same musicians, many of them fellow Malians.  The difference is that they recorded this time in Bamako, rather than Paris.  Maybe it was the home atmosphere, and maybe Salif is just getting comfortable in this largely acoustic, roots mode, but the result is even stronger and more self assured than Moffou.  In a word, M’Bemba is as good as anything this Afropop legend has produced during his nearly three decade career. 

The gentle opener, “Bobo,” interweaves four acoustic guitars two of them played by Salif himself and his old Les Ambassadeurs cohort Kante Manfila, a guest on a number of tracks here.  Harmonizing with his two sisters, Salif delivers a warm, wistful vocal reaching heights of passion more akin to a flamenco singer than the 70s rockers he has always championed.  Salif says he wanted this album to make people dance, and when he cranks up the beat, as on “Calculer” with its quasi-Caribbean cadence, or “Yambo,” a cranker driven by Harouna Samake’s phenomenal kemelengoni (harp) plucking, he makes it all happen with rich, natural sounds and hand percussion.  “Kamourkie” plays like a vintage Salif blowout, but again, no keyboards or electronics, not even electric guitars are needed to propel him to his most gut wrenching vocal performance on the album.  And the groove is to die for. 

There are some notable guests on the session.  On “Ladji,” Buju Banton growls his way into Salif’s funky meditation on the suffering of the warrior returning home alienated from friends and family.  Banton sings the only English words on the album, and they hit home with a message sure to resonate with Americans, though really, the theme is universal, hence its power.  And kora master Toumani Diabaté puts in a heartbreakingly beautiful performance on the title track, on which Salif humbly begs the pardon of griots, whose ancestral art, music, he, a mere noble, has encroached upon.  Such humility!  But it works because the empathy among the musicians, especially Salif and Toumani, is utterly convincing.  I have had an advance copy of this album for six months now, and have listened to it many, many times.  It just keeps getting better.  Salif has earned his position as one of the grand figures of African music, and he keeps earning it.  One can only hope that anyone in the upcoming generation of African singers will prove to have such a deep well of talent, resourcefulness, creativity, and courage to continually reinvent his or her art. 

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org