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Before it was anything else, Africa Express was a rebuke. It was dreamt up as a protest against the exclusion of African musicians from Live 8, the 2005 concert which coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. In the two decades since, the project has produced a series of albums and concerts, including a five-hour set at Glastonbury and a week-long train tour around the UK. The concerts are always thrilling; the albums sometimes pointless — the very first one “introduced” Malian musicians already familiar to the ears of anyone who would actually have bought the record.
More recently, albums have become more adventurous. In 2014, Terry Riley’s In C Mali reinterpreted Riley’s minimalist masterpiece with west African orchestration, and a 2016 live recording with displaced Syrian orchestral musicians was a cross-cultural fusion. Their sixth record Bahidorá! is a three-way mix-up between the usual African and Anglo-American suspects and a new element: Latin American and in particular Mexican music. It was recorded in the margins of the Bahidorá festival in Las Estacas, a nature reserve whose birdlife makes itself heard on the album.
Mexican music is relatively far-removed from African influences (compared with Brazil, for example), but the musicians find common ground. The lush strummed guitars of “Soledad” frame Luisa Almaguer and Damon Albarn’s lamentations of “loneliness without end” over Seye Adelekan’s dreamlike bassline. The pace switches up on “Kuduro”, where old Africa Express hands Fatoumata Diawara and Moonchild Sanelly trade verses in Bambara and Xhosa, both equally disappointed by men.
Marimba punks Son Rompe Pera team up with Ghanaian rapper M.Anifest on “Defiant Ones”. “It’s been a while so the boys mek wild,” he observes. “And their pockets feel damaged but they manage a smile.” There are desert vibes on “Dorhan Oullhin” as Imarhan’s Iyad Moussa Ben Abderahmane strums guitar and sings over Albarn’s piano. And everything goes full Mexrrissey as Mexican Institute of Sound and Los Pream steam through “Pánico”, a relocated version of the Smiths’ finest two minutes.
★★★★☆
‘Africa Express presents . . . Bahidorá!’ is released by World Circuit
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