Lamomali

There is an uncredited English saying: ‘Be not deceived with the appearance of things, for show is not substance.’ It would aptly sum up this vapid album. The packaging of Lamomali is colourful, exuberant and slick, the orchestration impeccable, with collaborations from top-drawer artists. Lamomali claims to be the fruit of 20 years of collaboration between -M- (Mathieu Chedid, one of France's most decorated pop musicians) and the kora-wielding Malian father-and-son Diabaté team. Yet Toumani and Sidiki must surely have been bewildered by the miasmic introspection of the French former child prodigy who, in the album's second song, asserts himself as a self-proclaimed ‘dumb white owl in Bamako.’
Lamomali flickers briefly into life with ‘Cet Air’, thanks to Pierre Juarez's driving bass and programming. There are occasional sweet harmonies found between kora and guitar. And -M- does indeed pack in an all-star team of guests, including Youssou N’Dour, Seu Jorge, Fatoumata Diawara and Ibrahim Maalouf for the 11 brief songs. Yet tunes such as ‘Solidarité’ and ‘Bal de Bamako’ contain painful echoes of Band Aid and the song ‘We are the World’. This album, Chedid states, is ‘a celebration of anomaly that is part of our lives.’ His words and objectives are confusing; this is a project of platitudes, full of good intention but little musical resonance.