The PAN M 360 team has a strong presence at the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique (FINA), with our contributors reporting daily on what they’ve seen and heard at the concerts presented in Montreal until July 23.
crédit photo: Andy Rubal
Blick Bassy and Cameroonian transculture
“Water is a powerful metaphor for the chain. It is a link without which we cannot live. It’s in all of us, in every living element of the natural order! As in a chain, as with water, we cannot extract ourselves from the chain without harming ourselves and others. Conflicts are like this: a withdrawal of certain groups from the living chain, from the chain of dependence. And the consequences are disastrous.
Taken from our interview with Blick Bassy by colleague Frédéric Caddin, this quote makes perfect sense.
Before us on stage or via his recordings (Ako, 1958, Madiba), the superb songs of this Cameroonian artist (transplanted to France) caress a goal of redemption and flow naturally, to continue the aquatic metaphor. The personal quest of Blick Bassy, an inspired and refined being, unfolds at the antipodes of ethnocentrism, as opposed to turning in on oneself or outdated ancestral values.
Blick Bassy proved it on Thursday at the Fairmount Theatre: he’s a gifted artist and an authentic citizen of the world, zero offbeat compared to all the current chanson projects taking place on this small planet. He expresses himself with the tools of today and yesterday, his choices of accompaniment including digital technologies, electronic or acoustic percussion, synthesizers, trumpet, invented or traditional instruments, electric guitar and vocals. His fine, airy counter-tenor voice (whose vocalizations sometimes recall the songs of the Bakaya people) is perfectly suited to the highly creative arrangements generated by this instrumentation, which in no way detracts from the Cameroonian foundations of his craft.
So we pay close attention to the ethereal ambience of his tunes and lyrics in the Bassa language, which we always manage to grasp, even if we don’t understand a word of it. His explanations in French are nonetheless clear and enlightening. An excellent addition to the Nuits d’Afrique 2023.
Alain Brunet
Eliasse, even more rock (zangoma) than expected !
The Comoros archipelago is little-known and little-visited by North Americans, hence our interest in learning more about its current culture… at Nuits d’Afrique, needless to say. That’s why we were at Balattou early Thursday evening. Like Blick Bassy, whom we heard a little later, Eliasse has left his native land to become something else and offer something else.
A highly intelligent artist with a particularly caustic sense of humor, the author, composer and singer is a hybrid creature, in the image of his global transhumance. Now living in France, he loves rock, and has teamed up with musicians from Bordeaux who have a passion for rock and, we imagine, jazz too. The bars composed to accompany Eliasse, whose popular culture is based on an extraordinary rhythmic corpus, must be understood. Percussion is a formidable weapon in Eliasse’s repertoire, with some very heartfelt sequences in store.
And so, Comorian folklore and rhythms are the starting point for an expression of rock that’s completely self-assured. Zangoma rock, as Eliasse calls it. His guitar and effects pedals, indeed, do not spare the creative saturation of the chords that make up these songs lit to perfection. Even more rock than expected! Interpreted in the Comorian language, Eliasse’s lyrics are song poems about human societies and their not always clean marks in the planetary ecosystem. If you don’t speak Comorian, you’ll be tempted to take a leap of faith when listening to Eliasse.
Alain Brunet
Juan Carmona, flamenco nuevo and Maghreb flavours
crédit photo: Andy Rubal
At National on Thursday nignt, Juan Carmona and his ensemble put on a thunderous performance for a suitably stormy evening. Inaugurating the concert with a solo guitar piece, Juan briskly set the tone of the evening with his fiery and lyrical virtuosity, creating an atmosphere that was both electrifying and deeply moving.
For the second piece a percussionist was brought on stage, and the beats of the cajón and the clapping of the palmas soon came to be the backbone of the music, enhancing the intensity and energy of the evening. The band grew to include a keyboard/flautist and bassist, and with this band Juan was afforded the freedom to play more lyrically and to take dazzling solos over his compositions.
However, the suspense was still growing in the audience, as the many fans of the Algerian-Montrealer vocalist, Youba Adjrab, waited for his arrival on stage. It did not take long after Youba began singing for the crowd to erupt in applause, and we were all taken aback by the sheer beauty and fluidity of Youba’s voice, soaring gracefully above the rich flamenco harmonies. It was a night that celebrated the rich tradition of flamenco while pushing its boundaries, with a modern and maghrebian twist that we all appreciated.
Varun Swarup
