Les Amazones d’Afrique started in 2017 as a sisterly supergroup of singers from the West African area of Mali. Based by Mamani Keïta, Mariam Doumbia (of Amadou and Mariam), and Oumou Sangare, and convened by French music-industry veteran Valerie Malot, the collective got here collectively by way of a shared musical imaginative and prescient, in addition to the purpose of championing gender equality and bringing consideration to the urgent subject of violence in opposition to ladies.
The group takes their identify from the Dahomey Amazons, a military of feminine warriors who solely protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey (in present-day Benin) for 200 years, starting within the seventeenth century. Additionally they drew inspiration from the Guinean all-female group, Les Amazones de Guinèe, who as soon as fought as their nation’s militia earlier than turning into state-sponsored songbirds.
All through Les Amazones d’Afrique’s brief historical past, numerous members have rotated out and in of the group, together with Beninoise Grammy winner Angélique Kidjo, Sangare, Rokia Koné, and Kandia Kouyaté, amongst others. In its present iteration, Keïta is the one member of the unique trio who remains to be concerned. For his or her new album, Musow Danse, Keïta is joined by Beninoise singer Fafa Ruffino, Ivorian songbirds Kandy Guira and Dobet Gnahoré, Nigerian singer Nneka, in addition to Congolese star Alvie Bitemo. However at the same time as their lineup has shifted, their beliefs stay ironclad. “The identify ‘Amazon,’ you see, comes from feminine warriors who had been from the Benin empire,” Ruffino advised the radio program Afropop Worldwide in 2019. “They’d a military of females. And that’s why we name ourselves that, as a result of we’re happening a struggle. It’s a struggle to defend ladies’s rights.”
Musically, Musow Danse drifts farther from the griot-leaning, trip-hoppy really feel of their 2017 debut, Republique Amazon, and its 2020 follow-up, Amazones Energy, which had been helmed by Congotronics producer Liam “Physician L” Farrell. Musow Danse revamps the Amazones’ groove with a refreshing help from alt-rock mainstay Jacknife Lee, who has labored with everybody from U2 to Taylor Swift to Amazones member Koné. The album seduces with glee, setting soothing conventional harmonies atop diverse tempos, feeling extra dynamic and cohesive than the group’s earlier albums in its embrace of electro-pop, funk, and folks fusions.
“African ladies, stand up!” they demand on “Musow Dante,” the album’s opening observe, on which Keïta, Ruffino, Guira, and Gnahoré reel out soulful vocals in Bambara, Fon, Bètè, and Mooré languages. With hypnotic thumb pianos, raspy turntables, upbeat percussion, and spirited performances from the Amazones, Musow Danse begins by leaning into its themes of empowerment and celebration.
All through the album, compositional complexity is on heavy show because the Amazones weave their cathartic cadences and ancestral harmonies into Lee’s futuristic fusions, counting on melodic transitions, lengthy pauses, and a heavy dose of choral backups. The steadiness of sonic opposites on Musow Danse is a big a part of the album’s enchantment. After kicking issues off with the psychedelic groove of songs like “Kuma Fo” and “Kiss Me,” they take issues right into a slow-burn center part on the energy of Keïta’s dirge-like lead vocal on “Espérance” and Guira’s soulful poetry in “To Be Beloved.” Ruffino resets the LP’s vibrance on “Queen Kuruma”: “Life has completely modified, the moms are standing for his or her little daughter’s rights, let’s get collectively,” she sings, her ululated bursts delivering a name for celebration and a renewal of hope.
On the closing observe “Bobo Me,” Nneka’s feisty vocals mix with Keïta’s opera-worthy octaves as Lee’s ethereal programming expenses the album right into a cinematic climax. Their closing refrain, “Womanhood just isn’t a simple stroll/And we can’t hold subjecting them to oppression,” highlights the sense of objective that governs the whole album. It’s that spirit and the Amazones’ highly effective performances that makes Musow Danse one of many nice pan-African consciousness LPs in fashionable historical past.
