- artist:ENZO AVITABILE & I BOTTARI
- featured artist:KHALED-MANU DIBANGO-HUGH MASEKELA-SIMON SHAHEEN-AM
- release year:2004
- country:Italy
- formats:CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:Musiche Migranti / Black Tarantella
- label:WRASSE
Save the World
Every so often in world music a sound comes along
that knocks you
sideways, for it has almost no reference to anything that
you have heard
before. Enzo Avitabile has made such an album. In Italy
he is a huge star,
and he has worked with artists such as Tina Turner,
James Brown and Randy
Crawford. But on Save the World he has made a
dramatic break with his pop
past in favour of a thrilling new global soundscape.
The building block is the ancient musical tradition of
rural Campania
in southern Italy, focussing on the hypnotic percussion
of Bottari, a group
of drummers beating huge, empty barrels. Over this
mesmerising backdrop,
Enzo sings in a voice rooted deep in some
Mediterranean equivalent of the
blues. But that's only the start. The unmistakable voice
of Khaled brings
out a rich, Arabic flavour on Balla Balla. The trumpeter
Hugh Masekela blows
up a storm on Questa e l 'Africa and the saxophonist
Manu Dibango does
similarly sterling service on Salvamme O'Munde. An
Egyptian brass band adds
exquisite slabs of middle-Eastern funk all over the
place, while the
Palestinian violin and oud player Simon Shaheen
contributes more subtle
flavours. If you insist on a comparison, then last year's
world music
hybrid, In the Hour of Two Lights, by Terry Hall and
Mushtaq, was at least
conceived in a similar spirit. Enzo and his drummers
play WOMAD this summer.
On the evidence of this record, they should be a
sensation.
Nigel Williamson
The Times