Lindé

After years of playing with Ali Farka Touré, Afel Bocoum seemed well placed to take over the great man’s mantle on Ali Farka’s death in 2006. Perhaps only lack of ambition held him back.

“Everybody seemed to be releasing albums, so it was like, ‘why not?’,” he said self-deprecatingly of his solo debut, Alkibar (World Circuit, 1999). There followed a couple of further solo albums on the Contre-Jour label, but he seemed happier as collaborator than bandleader.

Lindé proves that under the direction of a strong producer, Bocoum can be a potent frontman. Here he has two such figures to guide him and the combination of Nick Gold’s immersion in traditional music and Damon Albarn’s restless adventurism is a winning one, resulting in a record steeped in Songhai heritage with traditional instruments and call-and-response vocals to the fore, but with exquisite embellishments. On ‘Bombolo Liilo’ kora and the trombone of the Skatalites’ Vin Gordon dance an irresistible pas de deux. ‘Avion’ is a pan-African excursion on which Congolese soukous meets Malian tradition and Afrobeat. Elsewhere there are psych guitars, the violin of Joan as Police Woman snakes around the haunting sound of the single-string njarka (fiddle) and the powerhouse drumming of the late Tony Allen joins the calabashes in a clattering symphony of syncopated rhythm. Masterful.