Record of the Month
August  2005


Nyboma & Kamalé
Dynamique
Sterns Africa

Nyboma is the sweet-voiced singer from DR Congo who was one of the lead singers in Les Quatre Etoiles from the mid 1980s, and more recently has been in Kekélé. This collection is culled from the five albums he made under his own name, one in each year from 1981 to 1985, and might justify its place as record-of-the-month purely for its first track, ‘Doublé Doublé’, released for the first time on CD.

I first heard ‘Doublé Doublé’ (pronounced the French way, Doo-blay doo-blay) in 1983, when it was among the handful of songs by African singers and musicians that carried me away from the synth keyboards and drum machines that were swamping mainstream pop, into the clearer, warmer waters of what we now call world music. From the opening surge of guitar, to the sax section that comes into its own about six minutes into the track, the song has proved to be a durable perennial, never losing its magic for those of us who know it well, while still having an irresistible appeal to others hearing it for the first time. In contrast to so many soukous songs which find a hypnotic groove and stick to it, this one slithers like a snake, diverted by several other styles noted in Ken Braun’s sleeve note – West African highlife, Cameroonian Makossa, Caribbean zouk and American disco.

Nyboma wrote all the songs here, but he is unusual in making sure the arrangements work as ensemble pieces – you never get the sense that these performances are by a singer and a backing band. Instead, his voice is always embedded in the music, meshed with not only the backing singers but the musicians too. And it’s the rich texture that makes them so enjoyable to play and to dance to, time and again.

The second song on the CD, ‘Papy Sodolo’, was originally also the second (and only other) song on side one of the vinyl album, which at the time I liked almost as much as ‘Doublé Doublé’. After such an amazing introduction, almost any album that followed was liable to be a disappointment, and I did not find anything to latch on to from any of the next four, nothing to play time and again. What we didn’t know then was that this was the high point of soukous, which soon surrendered to the very synth keyboards and drum machines we had been trying to escape. So if there is nothing quite as arresting as the first two songs, there is still plenty enjoy as the rest of the ten-track collection plays on. ‘Pepe Bougier’ is a vehicle for Nyboma’s soaring voice and Dally Kimko’s endlessly inventive guitar, and ‘Aicha Motema’ has Passi-Jo singing telepathically close and Syran playing the cascading guitar lines.

If you have yet to buy a CD by a singer from Congo, here’s the one to start with, an album that establishes the benchmark. You’ll find it hard to match.

CG

You can buy direct from Sterns: http://tinyurl.com/dpm9t