The Kasambwe Brothers

• The Kasambwe Brothers [MASS MoCA, 2025] A

Consumer Guide Reviews:

The Kasambwe Brothers [MASS MoCA, 2025]
Just three siblings from small, landlocked, mostly agricultural Malawi in southeast Africa singing and playing guitar, drums, and a basslike indigenous instrument called the babatone. Recorded by the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts, there are no translations I can locate for nine tracks mostly in the five-minute range. But the publicist's one-sheet reports that themes are dominated by varying accounts of courtship and that eventually women participate as well as men. All of which sounds perfectly nice, I hope. In fact, however, the overall effect is considerably more ebullient than that—irresistible verging on joyful in what turns out to be the most inspirational Afropop surprise I've heard all year. A