David Dalle
Thursday June 10th, 2021 with David Dalle
New African releases from Mdou Moctar, Toumani Diabaté, Hailu Mergia. New music from Rajasthan with Bagga Khan. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

We start today with an all-African set featuring several new releases, beginning with the brand new album from Niger's searing guitarist Mdou Moctar. His new release features the same quartet of musicians from his previous stellar album and international tour. It rocks! The next new album is actually a new release of an extremely rare 80's cassette from Ethiopian great Hailu Mergia. This all instrumental album may be very familiar to Ethiopians who watched a lot of Ethiopian television in the 90's, as this music was often used as background for programs. The third new release is also an older recording. Toumani Diabaté was invited by the Barbican Centre in London to work with the London Symphony Orchestra. As a result of that meeting, recordings by Toumani were given to composer and arranger Ian Gardiner, who chose several of Toumani's works to arrange for orchestra. The result was a concert recorded at the Barbican Centre in 2008 featuring the London Symphony Orchestra with Toumani and four other Malian instrumentalists on balafon (played by Fodé Lassana Diabaté, who has performed on countless albums of Mandé music), guitars, ngoni, and percussion. The live recording has just been released for the first time on World Circuit. One unexpected gift from this 13 year old recording, the magnificent late singer Kassé Mady Diabaté also appeared on the closing piece "Mamadou Kanda Keita" (I strongly encourage you to listen to my Kassé Mady tribute show from May, 2018, shortly after he passed away. One of my favourite African singers: https://cod.ckcufm.com/programs/105/37809.html).