La Pluma

It’s almost impossible to categorise La Pluma other than to suggest it’s sure to appeal to those who don’t like their music to fit any pigeonhole. Like the late Lhasa de Sela and the French auteur Camille, the Swiss singer-songwriter Rahel Giger creates a maverick kind of border-defying folk-pop that refuses to recognise cultural boundaries and her teaming here with the Senegalese Moussa Cissokho, who grew up in a griot family, is only the start of the story. His rippling kora underpins Giger’s sweetly haunting voice on all ten tracks as she sings in German, Spanish, Slovenian, Mandinka and the ancient Swiss language of Romansh, yet no two tracks are remotely similar. ‘Madre Tierra’ has a touch of Manu Chao or Amparo Sánchez about it. On ‘Mi Casa’, Moussa’s kora is juxtaposed against warm clarinet as Giger duets wistfully with Argentinian rock-tango poet Daniel Melingo. ‘Anneli’ mixes jazz and folk idioms and ends up sounding like a modern madrigal as Giger harmonises with Büne Huber of chart-topping Swiss band Patent Ochsner. The album ends with the celestial ‘Memoria’ featuring Buddhist chants and the mesmerising voice of the Tibetan exile Loten Namling.