Tamala

The title translates as ‘Travellers,’ an apt name for an album that reveals an intriguing trio from very different musical backgrounds but who sound like they've been playing together all their lives. Senegalese kora player Bao Sissoko has played with Baaba Maal and recorded an album with Malick Pathé Sow, which was well-reviewed in these pages in 2012 (a Top of the World in #89). Mola Sylla is a Senegalese singer with a soulful and earthy voice who also plays the xalam (lute) and kalimba (thumb piano), and is perhaps best known for composing the soundtrack of Werner Herzog's film The Wild Blue Yonder with Dutch cellist Ernst Reijsiger. The Belgian folk violinist, Wouter Vandenabeele was last heard collaborating with the Syrian oud player Elias Bachoura and playing in the world-folk big band, Olla Vogala. Together they all make quietly graceful acoustic music of a chamber-like intensi^.

The opener, ‘Salubrite’, is an elegant, kora-led plea to ci^ slickers to respect the world of nature. The ritualistic ‘Fode’ finds Mola Sylla's kalimba to the fore while on ‘Zanzibar’, dedicated to the late taarab singer Bi Kidude, the lead instrument is Wouter Vandenabeele's Oriental-sounding violin, providing a fine counterpoint to Sylla's wailing voice. Yet it's invidious to single out individual performances. Ultimately it's the interplay between all the performers that makes Tamala such an engaging experience.