Afropop's Ron Deutsch attended the entire run of this year's Nuits D'Afrique Festival in Montreal. His report on the Montreal Jazz Festival was a tour de force! Here's his rundown on our favorite North American African music festival.
One of the highlights of our summer for over a decade now has been immersing ourselves in the largest festival in the Western Hemisphere which celebrates all forms of music of Africa and the African diaspora. Les Nuits d'Afrique celebrated its 38th year in the city of Montreal, Quebec, from July 9 to 21. Two weeks of music with over 30 indoor and over 40 outdoor showcases of artists representing over 30 countries.
Over the last few years, it continues to be difficult for artists from Africa to get visas to perform in Canada. But with that said, there was still a smorgasbord of great music to enjoy, many coming from this multi-cultural city itself, and many artists making their Nuits d'Afrique debuts this year, as well.
While it was impossible to see every show during the festival, we're going to focus here on those artists that were mostly new to me and/or left a lasting impression.
Without a doubt, BIM (aka Benin International Musical) was a showcase I'd been anxiously looking forward to. They performed at Nuits d'Afrique in 2019 and completely blew me away. So I was very pleased that they were even better the second time around. While their bio notes that their sound evolved out of Benin's Voudon worship dances, I find their influences to be too vast to nail down. They seem to slide through genres, at one point there's an afro-hiphop thing happening, then some afrobeat, then they sound like Talking Heads, then maybe Geoffrey Oryema, and then they're playing like a country waltz. They are really one of the most exciting live acts around at the moment, imho. They've also been selected for a showcase at WOMEX later this year.
Here's a video of their performance from 2019...
Next on the list was a very satisfying performance from Pahua, aka Paulina Sotomayor. If the name is familiar it's because she is one half of the Mexico City duo Sotomayor with her brother Raul. Paulina hatched Pahua, her new solo identity, during the pandemic. Continuing her exploration of blending afro-latin and Mexican folk with electronic beats, it was impossible to stand still during her concert. There is this ever-expanding roster of great Latina musicians/vocalists out there these days and if you are already into that scene or just starting to explore, allow us to recommend adding Pahua to your playlist.
Moving down to Brazil, we thoroughly enjoyed Alberto Salgado joined by cavaquinho wizard Márcio Marinho. Salgado is an award-winning composer, singer and producer, and has collaborated with folks like Chico César and Chico Buarque. Marinho is well known in choro circles in Brazil as both a performer and teacher.
A group we've been supporters and fans of for some time now, Montreal-based Afrotronix, have now sponsored and produced this project from their mother country of Chad. The Aunties are nine women, a collective of artists who came together escaping and surviving gender-based violence. Singing in their native Sara language, beating on calabashes, and adding electronic beats, their performance is a cry for equality and emancipation, and a celebration of their resilience. It began to rain during their performance, yet the audience was so emotionally involved in their performance, that nary a person left to seek shelter. Quite inspiring.
This year there were two groups, both based in France, who are mixing African, Arabic and Western rhythms. First up was Marseilles-based trio Zar Electrik. "Zar" is a trance ritual originating in Egypt and Ethiopia. Mixing electronic sounds and traditional instrumentation including the gumbri, oud and kora, they totally created a transcendent stew of old and new.
The other, "Electro-Maloya," Toulouse- based group Sofaz brings together musicians whose backgrounds are from Morocco, Burkina Faso and Reunion Island. Also mixing gumbri, synthesizers into their own gumbo of gnawa meets maloya, two genres in love with 12/8 meter permutations. This was worldbeat fusion at its best.
Montreal is a unique place on the planet where immigrant musicians from around the globe, meet, jam together and discover music from outside their former homelands. So what happened when Cameroonian bassist Just Woan fell in love with Cuban salsa? He created Bantü Salsa. In an interview in 2020, Woan noted: "There's a narrative side, the thing that griots bring to their approach.... what I wanted to show was the similarities between African and Latin beats.... I think that even in the Afro-Cuban culture, there is that kind of a storyline, and that's how many stories and traditions are being passed on."
As for the best of the rest, what's an African festival without some desert blues guitar? Taureg superstar Bombino headlined a superb set. While, Boubé, a former member of both Bombino's and Mdou Moctar's bands, now based in Montreal, having served his apprenticeship and has developed his own unique take on the now popular genre that we liked a lot. In fact, we liked him so much he was one of two recipients of this year's Afropop Award at the festival.
Another headliner we were always happy to see on stage was Cameroonian chanteuse Valerie Okoumé. Also headlining a different night was Soweto Bantu Continua Uhuru Consciousness, aka BCUC, a band that our own Banning Eyre has described in an interview piece as "indescribable." I concur.
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Other local acts we continue to be fans that played at Nuits d'Afrique this year, included Malian-Montreal artist Emdé, aka Baba MD, a former recipient of the Afropop award. And we never stop loving the growling afro-funk voice of Congolese-Montreal singer Joyce N'Sanna. Stephanie Orsorio, originally from Columbia, has received the "Female Artist of the Year" for the last two years at the Canadian Latin Music Awards. We loved her colorful costume and thoroughly enjoyed her set.
While a new group on the scene, Less Toches, whose members pool their Colombian, Mexican, Cuban and Argentinian heritages to offer up a huge repertoire of Latino folk music to explore, were so good we had to give them a second Afropop Award at the festival, as well.
And before we sign off, a tip of our hat to Rumba de Bodas, a Worldbeat band from Bologna, Italy, who unfortunately didn't draw a big crowd at their indoor show at Club Balattou during the first week of the festival due to bad weather, but I very much enjoyed their energy and music.
So, until next year.....
