Omar Sosa: An East African Journey — a global stew of influences

The Cuban-born pianist Omar Sosa has a long history of collaborations with African musicians, most notably on 2017’s Transparent Water with the kora player Seckou Keita. An East African Journey is one of his most ambitious projects, with fellow musicians from Ethiopia to Zambia and from the Indian Ocean islands Madagascar and Mauritius. The origins of the tracks were field recordings made on a tour in 2009, now spruced up with extra piano, percussion, keyboard-bass and harp.

African music bears different influences depending on where in the continent you are: in the west, you might hear influences from Brazil and the Caribbean; in the north, with Arabic music; in the south, with gospel. In the east, the influences are typically from India and the rest of South Asia. This is most clearly heard here in the tracks from Madagascar: three with the valiha virtuoso Rajery, and two more with Monja Mahafay on box zither and three-string violin and percussive coughing.

From Burundi comes Steven Sogo’s “Kwa Nyogokuru Revisited” with a rock-and-roll groove and whoops and yelps. Sogo sings about a family gathering to low notes from his umuduri, a fiddle with a box-gourd resonator. There is a similar sonority on Abel Ntalasha’s “Shibinda”, recorded in the southern end of the tour, in Zambia, about a young man playing through the night to signal his readiness for marriage. Sosa’s single notes dance with the metallic slap of the kalumbu’s string.

In Ethiopia, the harsh sound of Seleshe Damessae’s krar is to the fore: “Che Che” is galloping country-and-western, while “Tizeta” sets Damessae’s melismatic Amharic serenade to the beauties of Addis Ababa against dabs of piano, before the percussion breaks into a stroll. In neighbouring Sudan “Meinfajria” by Dafaalla Elhag Ali celebrates the joy of independent agricultural work with a swaying rhythmical click. We end back in the ocean, on Mauritius, with percussionist Menwar tapping a giant buzzing frame drum and half singing, half whispering the Creole Blues.

A rowdier east African experience can be found on Super Somali Sounds from the Gulf of Tadjoura (Ostinato), a compilation of 1980s and 1990s recordings by 4 Mars, the de facto national band of the one-party state of Djibouti. The full stew of influences can be heard: synths from Turkey, vocals from Bollywood, rhythms from Egypt, Yemen and Jamaica and flute sounds from East Asia.

★★★☆☆

‘An East African Journey’ is released by OTA