Comorian: We Are an Island, but We’re Not Alone

This is an oddball of an album. Produced by Ian Brennan – of Tinariwen fame – this release is as whimsical as it is puzzling. Three artists – Soubi, Mmadi and D Alimzé – deliver traditional songs stripped of all artefacts, with names like ‘I’ve Come to the City (Now My Shoes are Repaired)’, or the devilishly compelling ‘Bandits are Doing Bad Deeds’. We discover little else of their textual significance in the sleeve notes apart from the fact that the texts ‘evoke the mystifying realities of everyday life.’ Instead, Brennan prefers to paint a fanciful picture of both the archipelago (no, there is an operational Comorian army and, yes, there is more to the Comoros than car wrecks and polluted beaches) and his own odyssey to reach the Indian Ocean islands.

This is definitely an outside vision of a rich and complex nation whose musical identity has been resurrected by the Mwezi WaQ collective (who bagged the Charles Cros Discovery award in 2013). Yet, here, Brennan assembles three hugely expressive artists who lay bare their emotions, accompanied by energetic renditions on their gambussi (lute) and ndzendze (zither). The tunes range from a lilting ‘The Devil Doesn’t Eat Papaya, He Eats Fire’, to a gripping opener ‘Please Protect My Newborn Child from the Spirits’. Worth a detour, at least for the surprise element.