David Dalle
Thursday October 8th, 2020 with David Dalle
What makes Canada great: new Canadian Andean-Persian fusion, Kora Flamenco fusion; the latest from Oumou Sangare and more.

Starting today with three fantastic new releases, two of them from the Centre des musiciens du monde based in Montreal, which offers residencies for artists to explore and experiment, perform and meet other musicians from different backgrounds, most of whom now make their home in Canada. For a couple decades, Kiya Tabassian with his ensemble Constantinople has been the Canadian flag bearer for cross-cultural musical collaborations, and he is the artistic director for the Centre des musiciens du monde. So it comes as no surprise that both these new releases feature meetings of musicians from very different backgrounds. https://centredesmusiciensdumonde.com/ The first is a duo comprised of Showan Tavakol, a kamencheh player with Kurdish-Iranian background and Federico Tarazona, who studied classical guitar and Andean charango in Peru. They perform compositions on kamencheh and charango which find shared points between Persian, Kurdish, and Andean traditions in modes, rhythms and moods. Two sound worlds which are very different and I have never heard them together. The result is incredible, it works extremely well and is pure joy to to listen to! The second is a project by kora player and singer Zal Sissokho who has nurtured the idea of combining Flamenco with Mandinka music from West Africa since a trip to Seville, Spain. He got the chance when he was offered a residency at the Centre des musiciens du monde in 2018 where he approached the Montreal Flamenco guitarist Caroline Planté. They formed a group with Miguel Medina on percussion, Mohamed Masmoudi on oud, and Jean Félix Mailloux on doublebass. There have been other kora and Flamenco collaborations, both Toumani Diabate and Djeli Moussa Diawara have tried it, but it certainly has not been overdone! Zal Sissokho has worked on blending his kora technique with Flamenco influences. The result is another fantastic new release. The third new release is "Acoustic" from Oumou Sangaré, a wonderful album that she recorded live in studio with a trio of instrumentalists and two backing vocalists without amplification, headphones, retakes, or overdubs. It is simply her best album to date.