Album Reviews

The 36 year old Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré, daughter of a globe-trotting diplomat, has been performing and recording for over a decade now. This, her third album from 2008, has only recently been released on double 180g vinyl.

The album is difficult to pin down musically. It’s definitely not “world” music, nor, with its western style rhythm section, is it purely African. It’s an amalgam of styles, both current and traditional blended to produce a modern sound packed with lilting, undulating, hypnotic rhythms created using both traditional and western instruments including a harp and an electric hollow-bodied guitar, over which Ms. Taoré casts a hypnotic, soothing, intimately woven spell.

Without lyrical translation it’s impossible to know what she’s singing about, except for the seductive cover of Billie Holiday’s “The Man I Love,” sung mostly in English that’s a great place to start if you find listening to a foreign language frustrating—unless you speak Bambara (or French, since two songs are in that language).

Otherwise you’re on your own with the words, but the emotions pour through anyway and you can probably guess the sentiment from the music alone. For instance, “Aimer” sounds like a song of longing or some other kind of suffering.

The language barrier didn’t stop everyone for whom I played the opening cut at last winter’s CES from immediately taking note and writing down what it was. And I mean everyone.

The rhythms are hypnotic, the instrumentation exotic and familiar, Ms. Traoré’s voice intimate and evocative, and the sonic production delicately framed and impeccably recorded in three dimensions. Step away from your Patricia Barber albums (not the there’s anything wrong with Pat) and give this one a spin.