Music |
SMOD
By
Published: Aug 19, 2020
Category:
World
“Do you like music that makes you happy? I don’t mean moderately happy, 7.5 on a scale of 10, isn’t it a great day happy, kinda sorta happy. I mean ecstatic, get up and dance happy, throw caution to the winds and kiss a stranger happy, pump up the volume and wake your neighbors happy, see yourself realizing all your dreams happy.”
I wrote those lines a few years ago, when I was besotted by Amadou and Mariam’s Dimanche a Bamako and I wanted you to be as well.
The blind husband-and-wife singers from Mali, produced by genius/madman Manu Chao, deliver an imagined weekend concert in a park in Mali’s capitol. The music has brilliant harmonies, memorable melodies and dozens of Manu Chao’s favorite tricks: police whistles, xylophone, sirens, cheering crowds, a Tex-Mex organ and a beat that pounds disco right through the wall into reggae’s yard.
No surprise: Their son Sam made a CD called “SMOD,” which is also the name of his group.
The creation myth has it that Sam and his friends formed a group to make “African Rap.” And that, late at night, they’d rehearse on the rooftop terrace of Amadou and Mariam’s house. Manu Chao happened to be staying there. He liked what he heard and volunteered to produce. The music evolved. Chao recorded most of this CD on the roof terrace. His credo: “You don’t mess with what happens on the terrace.” The result is glorious, exultant, original. [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. For the MP3 download, click here.]
Yes, but is it as addictive, desert-island-worthy as “Dimanche a Bamako?” Almost — there’s not a clinker on it. Play it once, you’ll play it again and again until you drive everyone crazy — in the best possible way.
“La Chante” is the first song that hooked me.
But wait! What about…
And…
And “Dakan,” which accuses the country’s leaders of robbery; the video was censored. They weren’t surprised: “We talk a lot about politics, about corruption and injustice.”
And…
But you get the idea. And are, I hope, at least tapping your feet.
