The Algerian singer Khaled is no longer the force he was fifteen years ago, and seems to have slipped behind Rachid Taha as North Africa’s best known music ambassador. For me, there’s no comparison: Khaled is a true from-the-heart African singer; Rachid is just an old French rocker who happens to have been born in Algeria. (Having just received but not yet heard the new Rachid album, perhaps I should hold my tongue until I’ve checked it out.)  

Just because Khaled has a voice to die for, doesn’t mean he will make a good record simply by emptying his lungs. He needs good songs and appropriate arrangements. On his new album Liberté he gets both, at least for some of the time, thanks to the sympathetic production touch of Martin Meissonnier. This is the same Frenchman who rescued Fela Kuti back in the early 1980s, when he simultaneously introduced King Sunny Ade to the world outside Nigeria, so the man ‘has form’, as they say these days. ‘Hiya Ansadou’ catches Khaled at his most passionate and controlled, if that is not a contradiction in terms.
 
After I played this track by the Jamaican singer Queen Ifrica on Radio 3 recently, forum correspondent Neil Foxlee pointed out that I was pronouncing her name wrong – it should be Queen I-frica. Unfortunately, I had already recorded this programme before receiving this advice so you will hear me get it wrong again. Neil also explained the meaning behind the cryptic song title: “T.T.P.N.C. is apparently a Tribute To the Pitfour Nyahbinghi Centre”.

 Most of the time, the records I play in these programmes tend to be the same as those which get reviewed in the world music magazines and in the ‘world music’ slots in the UK’s quality daily paper, but I have not noticed much attention being given to the new album by Mohamed Ilyas from Zanzibar. He is the most famous singer on the island, and his new album is a beautiful demonstration of the appeal of East Africa’s Taarab music, the ever-intriguing melange of Egyptian, Arabic, Indian and African ingredients. The record label Chiku-Taku is owned by Roger Armstrong of Ace Records, who has apparently abandoned the Globestyle label, which released several spectacular albums in this style back in those heady and optimistic days of the late 1980s.

We return to Queen Ifrica’s recent album Montego Bay and her song Daddy, which shook people in Jamaica and beyond when they heard it because she sings about an extremely serious subject not normally discussed in public in any way, never mind in a song.  I think she does this really brilliantly.
 

Finally, Fat Freddy’s Drop, the outfit from Wellington, New Zealand, have delivered the album that has been hoped for ever since they released several outstanding singles more than five years ago, some under the band’s name and others under the names of their lead singer and producer, Joe Dukie and DJ Fitchie. The young studio engineer Glenn was fascinated as he listened to this, recognising several music styles being ingeniously threaded together, including reggae and garage.

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