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Afrissippi
Fulani Journey
Things like this are just too irresistible: a Senegalese musician moves to Oxford Mississippi, meets up with some local blues talent and before you know it, a new band is born. Guitarist Guelel Kumba is joined by Eric Deaton (of the RL Burnside Band) and local blues band, The Taylor Grocery Band, with a special bonus video that includes a guest appearance by the MC5 legend, John Sinclair.
Listen:
Ngoppe Kam Mi Yama
Nduumandii
Ngol Jimal (full song)
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| Senegalese native and North Mississippi transplant Guelel Kumba plays amplified acoustic guitar and sings in Fulani. Able backing comes from guitarist and Junior Kimbrough apprentice Eric Deaton, Kimbrough's son Kinney (drums), R.L. Burnside's grandson Cedric (drums), a host of North Mississippi session men, and other guests including Memphis sax-flute journeyman Herman Green (Lionel Hampton, B.B. King, Miles Davis) and activist-poet-jazz historian-promoter-DJ John Sinclair (of MC5 and White Panther fame, and a New Orleans resident since the early 1990s)... Recorded in Clarksdale and Oxford, Afrissippi's Fulani Journey springs (per the band's web site) from the "hill country boogie and cotton patch trance blues" tradition. The description is apt enough for Kumba's modal guitar drone and soaring vocals. A world-weary Sinclair uncorks extended spoken-word diatribes on Fulani history, the transatlantic slave trade, and the blues on "Njulli-Fulani Journey" and the video bonus track. Independent releases like this one are the happy product of digital technology's democratic overture, and Fulani Journey's idiosyncratic vitality suggests that the blues in its many guises will continue to find its own way, looking back while moving forward. - Michael Stone, RootsWorld |
The record label says:
Recorded in two nights with no overdubs at Mathus's Delta Recording Service in Clarksdale, Mississippi, FULANI JOURNEY shows the head-on collision between Kumba's music and the full-throttle drive of its descendant, the hill country blues of North Mississippi. This enhanced cd also includes a special behind-the-scenes film shot & directed by Scotty Glahn, director of BEANLAND: RISING FROM THE RIVERBED as a bonus track. The film features a rap by Afrissippi's high priest poet, the legendary JOHN SINCLAIR, as the band channels the "future primitive" vibe of Mathus's studio.
Afrissippi's debut album, FULANI JOURNEY, tells the story of GUELEL KUMBA, a singer-songwriter from the delta of Senegal, West Africa. Kumba moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in 2001 where he jammed with ERIC DEATON, apprentice to the late R.L. Burnside. The two discovered the similarities between the hill country blues of North Mississippi and Kumba's traditional Senegalese melodies, and the nucleus of Afrissippi was born. On FULANI JOURNEY they enlist the region's finest including drummers Cedric Burnside & Kinney Kimbrough, wildman Jimbo Mathus, sax legend Herman Green, and the Taylor Grocery Band.
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