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In Mti Wa Maisha (The Tree
of Life), Professor Adam Solomon, who is featured on
the Juno-award winning CD African Guitar Summit (CBC), combines the
best guitar tradition of the early 1960s with modern East African
big band sound from Congo, Tanzania and Kenya, and beautiful lyrics
from Mombasa, to create a most original style best described as
Afro-Soul Rhumba.
Indeed, instead of running for the easy Soukous music that defined
most of the 1990s, Solomon dips deep into the roots of rhumba that
have nourished dance music in East and Central Africa since the
early 1950s. He deftly resurrects the flickering fiesta guitar
style pioneered by Henri Bowane and elaborated by Nico Kasanda on
the tracks Rehema, Shemegi and
Maneno Mengi. But for the purists who deify Kasanda as a
guitar music legend, the sweet fiesta instrumental track
appropriately titled Kasanda Remembered is to be
savoured again and again.
However, what defines the originality of this album is Solomon’s
gift as a singer-songwriter. Where he once allowed his guitar to do
the singing, his voice has come ashore, weaving the threads that
stitch tradition and modernity. On the tracks Mapendo,
Rikata and Huyu Niliye Naye, he finds
soulful melodies on the shores of the Indian Ocean among the Swahili
fishermen and the traditional farmers eking a living out of the
soil. Retaining the simplicity and spontaneity that characterize
communal songs among the Swahili, his voice breaks free from the
shackles of being one of the best guitar talents from Continental
Africa.
In
Mti Wa Maisha (Tree of Life), Solomon employs
his beautiful guitar style to infuse life in the roots music,
touching a new vibrancy, intimacy and range never embraced in his
earlier recordings. The age of Afro-Soul Rhumba is here—dance away
to your hearts’ content. |
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