With music by Massimo Donno & Banda de lu Mbroia (Italy), the band AMMAR 808 (Maghreb) and Bombino (Niger).
1- Viva il Re! – Massimo Donno & Banda de lu Mbroia.
The music of this band has been reconstructed on the basis of personal memories and testimonies, reminiscent of Frederico Fellini’s Italy. Together with the 19 musicians of the band, Massimo Donno gives words of an age-old music culture, still alive in his home country, Salento (a region in southern Italy, Salento forms the heel of the Italian boot).
CD. Viva il Re! – Massimo Donno & Banda de lu Mbroia. Label: Visage music (2017), code: VM3015. VIDEO
2- Maghreb United – AMMAR 808
AMMAR 808 is Sofyann Ben Youssef, a Tunisian producer and self-proclaimed ‘North African futurist’ who makes traditional ‘raï- and chaabi arrangements’ with his Roland TR-808. Packed with ‘beats’, ‘twangy keys’ and compressed ‘darbukas’, his latest project he is accompanied by Tunisian vocalist Cheb Hassen Tej, ‘Gnawa’ musician Mehdi Nassouli and the celebrated Algerian singer Sofian Saidi. Traveling together through a united Maghreb.
CD. Maghreb United – AMMAR 808. Label: Glitterbeat (2018), code: GBCD 060. Distribution: XANGO music. VIDEO
3- Deran – Bombino.
The new bluesman is no longer from the south of the US, but in the middle of the Sahara, where Agadez has taken the place of Memphis. The guitarist Omara Moctar or Bombino has seen more than many bluesman on a trip through the delta. His Tuareg people have been oppressed since the 90s, his band members were shot and his guitars were taken away, because they thought it was a dangerous weapon in his hands. The African rhythms, the razor-sharp funk and the guitar solos that are brighter than the Sahara sun tell, among other things, that story.
CD. Deran – Bombino. Label: Partisan Records (2018), [PIAS]. VIDEO
