Biyo (Water is Love)

Pop-culture history is littered with actors chancing their arm at cutting records, from Robert Mitchum’s dalliances with calypso through to Scarlett Johansson’s tributes to Tom Waits. Saba Anglana, originally an Italian-Somalian actress familiar to Italian screens from playing a prejudice-bashing policewoman, has changed modes more successfully than most. Biyo, her second album following her 2007 debut for the World Music Network label, is an impressive offering that might see her music career eclipse her acting past life. Although it’s a meeting of her European and East African heritages, this is an album that pleasingly lends heavily on the latter, drawing performances that are by turns urgent (‘Amal Fatah’), soothing (‘Biyo’) and plaintive (‘Yet Nou’). It was partly recorded in Addis Ababa, and she’s clearly a big fan of the country’s music – Ethiopian-specific instruments like the masinko violin and the washint flute are heavily employed, as are the undulating strings of the Yod Abyssinia Orchestra.

Not that Saba limits herself to the sounds of East Africa, as shown by Cheikh Fall’s delightfully fluttering kora (harp-lute) on ‘Aequa Di Mare’. But such expansiveness is also her partial downfall. Towards the record’s close, there’s a clutch of English-language songs whose comparative anonymity dilute the overall effect. If these tracks represent an attempt to court wider international attention, next time she’d be well-counselled to leave such distractions on the cutting-room floor. Then we’d have a record that would be truly faithful to Saba’s undeniable talent.