Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

Consumer Guide:
  User's Guide
  Grades 1990-
  Grades 1969-89
  And It Don't Stop
Books:
  Book Reports
  Is It Still Good to Ya?
  Going Into the City
  Consumer Guide: 90s
  Grown Up All Wrong
  Consumer Guide: 80s
  Consumer Guide: 70s
  Any Old Way You Choose It
  Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough
Xgau Sez
Writings:
  And It Don't Stop
  CG Columns
  Rock&Roll& [new]
  Rock&Roll& [old]
  Music Essays
  Music Reviews
  Book Reviews
  NAJP Blog
  Playboy
  Blender
  Rolling Stone
  Billboard
  Video Reviews
  Pazz & Jop
  Recyclables
  Newsprint
  Lists
  Miscellany
Bibliography
NPR
Web Site:
  Home
  Site Map
  Contact
  What's New?
    RSS
Carola Dibbell:
  Carola's Website
  Archive
CG Search:
Google Search:
Twitter:

Toumani Diabaté's Symmetric Orchestra

  • Boulevard de l'Indépendance [Nonesuch, 2006] A-

See Also:

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Boulevard de l'Indépendance [Nonesuch, 2006]
Conceived and directed by Malian kora luminary Diabaté, this grandly danceable pan-Mandé big band aims to balance modernism and neotraditionalism as it reconceives Sundiata Keita's empire for a democracy that only arrived in 1992. Nine tracks feature six lead singers and 26 musicians, a Pee Wee Ellis horn section chips in, and the material is shamelessly surefire--griot classics, horn-tutti salsa, an apt reminder that the Wolof word for "yes" is "wow," and the finest hippopotamus metaphor in God's creation. That would be "Mali Sadio," meaning "hippopotamus with white legs" and concerning the slaughter of such a beast by a homo sapiens with white skin. Too often in "world music," the kora lulls, slipping exotically into didgeridoo mode. Diabaté has won a Grammy playing that game. Here he rules, and he rocks. A-