About 4 years ago jazz trumpeter Volker Goetze got together with Senegalese kora player (sort of like a West African sitar) Ablaye Cissoko to put together an intriguing duet recording of African tunes. The mix of continents worked amazingly well, and this followup is even better. Such a simple concept, having Cissoko’s strings supply the gentle rhythms and melodies, while Goetze blows African obbligatos to create some thrilling atmospheres. Cissoko’s vocals, as shown on a piece like “Kana Maloundi,” are light, delicate and fragile, evoking starlight images in the Sahel desert, while Goetze’s valve work can sounds like a gentle bop melody or folk tune from the Dogon Cliffs.
The mix of the delicate string work and flowing horn work alarmingly well on pensive pieces like the flowing “Fleuve,” and with added percussionist Joe Quitzke on “Silo,” the tempo gets revved up with some exhilarating consequences, but with always retaining a mood of celebratory joy. The aural pictures that these gents portray on a song like “Tonga” will transport you to places the way that National Geographic does with photographs. Listen to something new, but since before the Enlightenment.
Motema Records