Nyboma & Kamalé Dynamique

Album Review

Nyboma is one of the great African voices, a frontman for Kekele with their fine rhumba music. But this album is taken from much earlier in his career, from 1981-1985, when he was a soukous star. What he did then was Cuisinart any number of styles, from Congolese rhumba to disco, with spices from many parts of West Africa. Unlike so much of the soukous that emanated glossily from the studios of Paris and aimed at the dancefloor, there's real grit and heart to the music there, a soul that all the studio musicians in the world couldn't supply to order. There's no formula to the music here, just the sense of singer — and what a singer with his deep, seductively velvet voice — and band trying something new, upping the pace to frantic, and letting rip. The result was utterly glorious music, and over the course of this you can hear the music grow and develop, from bud to bloom. It's a memory of a time long past — but the music still shines brightly.