- artist:Afel Bocoum (Contre-Jour sprl)
- region:West Africa
- release year:2009
- style(s):Afro, Traditional
- country:Mali
- formats:Book, CD (Compact Disc)
- record posted by:Contre-Jour
- label:Contre-Jour
- publisher:Contre-Jour
- buy this record
Links
cj023
One lingers among the songs of Afel Bocoum like one would among the sculptures of Ousmane Sow. Because one enters a body of work, not a juxtaposition of songs but an entity. Indeed, Afel Bocoum does not propose a collection of songs that emanate out of his inspiration by chance. He invites his listeners to follow him along a precise itinerary. With a certain logic that marks the passage of one song into another, of one language into another, of one subject into another, from one perspective to the next; but also with a manifest unity as much in the subject as in the musical approach. Each song is sculpted out of the same material, like a heavy soil, carrying an environment. Out of these red and yellow soils of Africa that give us the image and depth, come the daily life and spirit of the artists who knead them just as much as those who tread them day after day. All of his work is directed towards the same objective, how to best use this raw material to sketch these communicative thoughts.