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THE MUSIC IN MY HEAD
Stern's Africa
This tour of Senegal, which is also the soundtrack to compiler-annotator
Mark Hudson's novel of the same name, hops around
chronologically and skips a dozen years: all of its 12 longish
tracks were recorded either 1970-1980 or 1992-1995. It also sticks
an uncannily Egyptian elegy from Congolese soukous godfather Luambo
Franco in among its treasures. Yet it coheres like such
conceptually unified multi-artist classics as The Indestructible
Beat of Soweto and Guitar Paradise of East Africa. More or less
constant are the piercing vocals, kora-like guitar figures, and
insistently independent percussion familiar to pop adventurers via
crossover aspirants Salif Keita and Youssou N'Dour, both
represented here with cuts stronger and stranger than the music
Americans know them for. It's not surprising that the early stuff
experiments so roughly and daringly with rock guitar and hotel-band
horns. But it's gratifying that even after mastering international
pop, artists like N'Dour and Omar Pene can mix it up with the West
and still prove there's no place like home.
Rolling Stone, Feb. 18, 1999
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