Ariyo (A Sight to Rejoice)

The sixth studio album from singer-songwriter Kuku is a 16-track affair, wide-ranging in both musical and thematic scope and tied up in a bow by way of a dedication to the artist’s baby son, Ariyo. Just what the future holds in such precarious times is of concern here, and the Paris-based Nigerian-American enlists guests including singer Shola Adisa-Farrar and keys player Brian Jackson alongside soundbites from black revolutionaries as he considers possibilities. Opener ‘Commerce or Conscience’ sets out his stall, as a lilting guitar-and-piano intro blends into spoken-word musings by Nina Simone and Fela Kuti about the duty of the artist to reflect the times and Kuku asking, in his warm, commanding baritone, ‘ What you going to do with all that talent?

Folksy tunes recalling cotton-picking (‘Share Cropper’) and sumptuous Yoruba-language lullabies (‘Ariyo’) are juxtaposed with anthems such as ‘Who Taught You’, in which a sample of Malcolm X’s legendary black powerfilled 1962 speech moves into a sort of upbeat freedom dance (in a remixed track, the speech is sung with added lyrics), and the gravitas-laced, highlifeflecked ‘Silence’, with its sonorous harmonies and barbed multilingual lyrics. The duet ‘What a World’ is a lament for the ages; the harmonicafuelled ‘Aziyadé’ a gorgeous love ballad; a cover of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’, with deft Yoruba-language passages, is pitch perfect, heartfelt. An album as multifaceted, then, as Kuku is multi-octave: variously a paean to the ancestors, a road map for the child, a caution against complacency, and a tonic for the soul.