Description
Sally Nyolo's third album, "Camerounian Singer Sally Nyolo Continues on Her Back-to-Basics Route, This Time Taking It All the Way to the Village with the Bikutsi Rhythms," is a collection of songs about the community and family she comes from in Cameroon. The album features a mix of acoustic and electric guitars, rich percussion, and layered vocals, all of which create a hypnotic experience. Nyolo's lyrics are centered around the village and community she comes from, and the album has a rough and rural feel under the multi-track voices of massed backing vocalists.
While her former colleagues in Zap Mama move toward a slicker
sound, on her third solo release, Camerounian singer Sally Nyolo
continues on her back-to-basics route, this time taking it all the
way to the village with the bikutsi rhythms. The most notable
things are the ample groove supplied by the guitar, which finds its
riff and hangs onto it like a pit bull discovering a mailman's leg,
the rich range of percussion, and the layering of voices that can
move between the airiness of angels and the roll of thunder. All of
that makes for a substantial, and very hypnotic, package. Partly
recorded in Cameroon, it has a very rough and rural feel under the
multi-track voices from massed backing vocalists, up to ten of
them, making for a female choir. While the bikutsi rhythm has been
hijacked by men in recent years (such as Les Tetes Brulaes), its
origins are with the village women, and Nyolo reclaims it here,
even if she does help it travel the world on a track like Harlem.
Lyrically, again, it's centered on community and family, grounded
in the village. Over the course of her three albums, Nyolo seems to
have found her calling, and this mix of the raw and the high-tech,
in perfect balance, is her best effort to date. ~ Chris Nickson
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