Sahara: Blues Of The Desert CD

The stated concept of this two-CD collection of African music is to highlight the connections between Africa and the blues, the liner notes cautioning that "it's not a scholarly exercise and makes no claims as such." And it's probable that these particular 21 tracks, most or all (dates are missing for a few selections) recorded in the 15 years or so subsequent to 1990, would not pass a scientifically folkloric test of the most blues-related African recordings available. It's better to simply treat it as a quality, lengthy (running a little over two hours) collection of rootsy contemporary African music. Some of these names are well known to Western listeners (Ali Farka Toure, Oumou Sangare, Hamza El Din, Baaba Maal, Aster Aweke, Youssou N'Dour); others aren't; most are from countries bordering the Sahara desert, but some aren't; and a couple artists (Markus James and the duo of Robert Plant & Justin Adams) aren't even African. Regardless of the flexible musical boundaries, this is generally good, varied African music with a fairly traditional base, often prominently employing string instruments, even if only isolated cuts are apt to make listeners think of the blues. Ali Farka Toure's "Tolumba" is certainly about the most obvious of those, which comes as little surprise, since he's so often been classified as an African John Lee Hooker. At the other end of the scale, you have Gigi's dreamily ambient "Abay (Illuminated Audio Remix)," given a dub treatment by American producer Bill Laswell, which might be a decent track, but the specific connection with the blues-from-Africa concept gets pretty tenuous here. And you also have material that is based on voice and percussion, like Yande Godou Sene's "Salmon Faye (Reprise)." Whatever the case, the quality of the music is pretty consistent, perhaps more low-key than the average contemporary African collection, but effectively so. ~ Richie Unterberger

These 2 CDs feature some the most popular and successful 'world music' artists currently recording.

Photographer: Frans Lemmens.

Translator: Bill Laswell.

Arranger: Yandé Coudou Sène.

Personnel: Markus James (vocals, guitar); Richard Caswell (bottleneck guitar).

Recording information: Ventilador Estudi, Barcelona, Spain.

Uncut (p.119) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Any doubts that the blues came from Africa will swiftly be dispelled by this 21-track, double-CD compilation..."