Nuits D'Afrique: Bombino @ Club Ballatou

Hailing from northern Niger, Bombino are one of the new representatives of a style which I call saharan rock, for lack of any other term. Anticipated by Ali Farka Toure with his fusion of Songhai music and American blues, Saharan Rock first fully emerged with the group Tinariwen, a group of Touareg musicians who traded in their acoustic instruments for electric ones. The Touareg are traditionally a nomadic people of the Sahara, coming from the Berber culture of North Africa, but spread to the northern parts of West Africa. With ties to both North and West Africa, Touareg music uses the major and minor pentatonic scales beloved of West Africa, but plays them with a more typically Islamic feel in terms of rhythm and melody. Tinariwen took this style to a new level of sonic assault by bringing in blues and rock influences to create massive, warm sounds. Bombino follow in Tinariwen’s footsteps, and delighted audiences on July 19th with this incredible sound.

Bombino started their set off with a more mellow tone with just the lead singer, the lead guitariston an acoustic guitar and the drummer playing a djembe, who also provided beautiful sounding back-up vocals. This created a haunting mood, tense with restrained passion.Afterwards, the rest of the band came in, and the lead player switched to lead electric guitar and the drummer switched to a drum set. The other musicians played rhythm electric guitar, calabash and bass. And soon the entire audience was shouting and clapping along to the powerful sound emitting from the stage, the band had a crazy energy that infected the overcrowded club - unfortunately, too crowded for vigorous dancing, which the group surely deserved, and which the audience surely wanted to give them. Though awesome, Bombino had a fairly predictable formula. A song was either in major or minor pentatonic, usually in the key of A and B. The band would usually play a set of chord changes over and over, while the lead player sang a few lines, but mostly soloed on his guitar. So basically, the focal point all night was the guitar solos, but they were amazing, inspired and deftly executed. My only complaint is that the band went too far when they ran out of material and just started jamming for the last few songs. But overall it was a memorable and thrilling occasion. 8 out of ten dancing hippy ladies.

-Sasparila co-hosts Pan African Hour every Wednesday from 12-1pm