Kekele - Rumba in the Congo

It is to the Democratic Republic of Congo that the next musical focus belongs.

The roots of Congolese Rumba can be found in the city of Kinshasa (Leopoldville at the time) where local musicians started becoming familiar with Cuban music through radio broadcasts made during the 1950s. Hearing these imported sounds artists sought to combine them with their own local rhythms.

Congolese Rumba was born out of this musical cross pollination and it went on to dominate African popular music throughout the 1960s and 70s. Fast forward to the new millennium and for todays up and coming generation it’s been relegated to musical history.

However, Kekele, whose band members musical experience exceeds one-hundred years, have resurrected the Congolese Rumba. Their latest album Kinavana (and before that Rumba Congo) has first rate production and is sonically fantastic. They prove that’s it not just Tito Puente or Buena Vista Social club that know how to work those Cuban rhythms.

Listen to the track I’ve featured on this page, close your eyes and play guess the country.

Kekele - KinTokobuta Mikuwa

We could be sitting on a beach in Hawaii, cocktail in hand watching the hula girls swaying gently in the breeze. We could in Cuba playing dominoes in the street, or we could be in Africa? No way, we can’t be in Africa! But that’s exactly where we are!

The joy of this album for me is its ability to transport you to a place that leaves you guessing, albums like this remind us that we are all part of the same whole.

All Star Global Warming

Remember Global warming? that period in the 1990s that saw Governments and its communities creating a movement for being more environmentally conscious? That’s right you remember when people started to recycle, and they invented those enormous light bulbs that used less energy. Well, it seems that since the West captured Saddam and Osama has fallen out of the media spotlight environmentalism has made a welcome return to the global agenda. Now communities are made to feel that every freak weather condition is due not to industrial pollution or the seven litre car that has just pulled up alongside them at the traffic lights, but because they put a plastic bottle into a paper recycling bin.

Whatever the politics of it all here is a musical benefit, Rhythms del Mundo is a first for ‘Artists’ Project Earth' - the climate change and disaster relief charity.

The first album features a collaboration of artists including Coldplay, U2, Dido & Faithless, Sting, as well Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo from Buena Vista Social Club. It is the latter two stars that bring to the album the overall flavour: Buena Vista versions of the featured artists most well known songs.

The result is distinctive: Colplay's Clocks, gets a new lease of life with Cuban instruments dissolving the desperation found in the original version, and catapulting the song to a fresher, more positive level. Also Omara Portuondo’s version of the Fugees hit, Killing me Softly, is another notable performance.

Find out more about the album on their website www.rhythmsdelmundo.com

I hope that in the future APE finds a way to team up with artists such as Toumani Diabate, Vieux Farka Toure, Kelele, Africando and Tony Allen to bring these fantastic artists to the global stage.