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Vol. 23, No. 3, 2025
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montreal's

2025 FESTIVAL INTERNATIONAL NUITS D'AFRIQUE MUSIC FESTIVAL

report: ROBERT J. LEWIS
photography: JERRY PRINDLE

______________________________________________________

 

Music was my refuge
I could crawl into the spaces between the notes
and curl my back to loneliness.
Maya Angelou

One good thing about music,
when it hits you feel no pain.
Bob Marley,

 

 

This year's 39th edition of Les Nuits promised to be the big one before the Big Bang: next year's 40th anniversary. It featured 120 concerts: 13 days of indoor programming with the last six days dedicated to free shows that ran from the early afternoon until the midnight hour at Place des Spectacles, in the heart of Montreal’s cultural center.

As a platform for both music and culture, where past, present and future converge in the magic of performance, Montreal’s 13-day Les Nuits d’Afrique Music Festival is unparalleled in the Americas, in part due to the astute programming of Sepopo Galley and her team and the city’s welcoming attitude to diasporic Africans who have cultivated enthusiastic audiences for the incredible variety of music they introduce to the city and beyond.

The concept of fusion of different musics is, as an encyclopaedic entry, typically attributed to jazz in the late 1960s, in reference to Miles Davis, John McLaughlin and Weather Report when they began to incorporate rock into the jazz idiom. However, and in unacknowledged point of fact, the roots of fusion go back to the 15th century, with the transatlantic slave trade. When Africans were forcibly transported by the tens of thousands to the Americas, it had an unintended but profound cultural effect: every nation that sanctioned the importation of slaves witnessed its music grow and evolve and eventually inform all the world’s musical genres. There would be no Brazilian or Cuban sound without Africa.

From its humble beginnings to the present, Les Nuits continually dedicates itself to the retelling, through music, of this remarkable historical odyssey , at once tragic and cathartic. In what can only be described as the mother of all ironies, the importing nations profited not only from centuries of free labour but saw their cultures unprecedentedly enriched. In today's more tolerant climate, what was once a 'win-win' for the abusing country is now a 'win' for the world's music, with Montreal serving as the focal point for the Americas.

Afrobeat, sometimes called Afrofunk, is the current that runs through the festival’s entire line-up of music. As a fusionable music, it is without equal and represents one of the most enduring fusions in the history of music. In 2022 Afrobeat (according to Spotify) registered an astounding 13 billion streams. There would be no James Brown without the influence of Nigeria’s Fela Kutu; and in respect to its polyrhythms and contrapuntal bass lines, there would be no reggae or hip-hop. For a quick immersion in Afrobeat and its impact and influence, there is no better place to begin than with Les Nuits d’Afrique festival.

Among the many vibrant venues of the festival, none is as important as the city’s legendary Club Balattou. For 35 years this iconic establishment has served as a crucial launching pad for countless musicians by fostering a dynamic environment. Club owner and festival founder Laminé Toure says it has been the privilege of a lifetime in his role as an enabler in the continuous cross-pollination of the world’s diverse musical traditions.

As per tradition, the festival kicked off at the storied club with a captivating performance by the Columbian-Belgian group La Chiva Gantiva. Their foreboding sound, heavily driven by percussion, dedicates itself to the plaintive and portentous variations on the theme of apocalype. On the emotive scale, the music vacillates from cries in the night to a persistent wailing sound, the perfect soundtrack for a species that has brought itself to the edge of the abyss. Which isn't to say the music wasn't friendly to whatever contortions one might bring to the dance floor. Built on a single, drone-like harmonic, their music creates its effects through a conjunction of uncomplicated melody, dissonant vocals and a counter-intuitve rhythm section. Theirs isn’t so much a message in the bottle as an explosion of light in dark times; a powerful reminder that in every pessimistic music there is a transcendental interval. Transmuting the confusion of the world into the sound and fury of life is La Chiva’s supreme accomplishment.

In a similar vein, Syrian-French ensemble Sarab combined the traditional Arab sound and its persistently tragic scale with techno-electric dynamics with one aim in mind: frenzy, catharsis. Singer, song writer Climene Zarkan wields her powerful voice with the precision of a glass cutter. From one moment to the next it can be a thing of beauty or turned into a bullet. But either way, it transports the listener to a better world than the one he/she presently inhabits.

Of Toureg/Berber descent, Boubé’s heartfelt music begins in the hard scrabble life on the desert’s edge where even camels fear to tread. His music is a rite of initiation that culminates in the present century, articulated by compelling guitar work, the notes of which initially disappear as they are played, as if blown away by a desert wind, but gradually becoming more pedal-sustained and acidic (think Hendrix), as if the music’s mode of transport had been imperceptibly switched from dromedary to a digital device. Boubé proved to be one of the festival’s pleasant discoveries but it remas to be seen if the music can withstand repeated listening.

When Brazil’s Flavia Coelho landed on the stage for the festival's main event, more kinetic energy than flesh, it was as if she had spent the first part of her day attached to a particle accelerator. With her music serving as launching pad for her boundless energy and enthusiasm, before disbelieving eyes, she effortlessly defied the laws of physics, appearing to occupy multiple spaces simultaneously. While not as young as she used to be (I last saw her eight years ago), her repertoire, paradoxically, has grown younger, with the introduction of Brazilian rap into her bouncy playlist. In the spirit of the positive passage of time, the most promising change in Coelho's musicianship comes by way of hers voice: now richer and more resonant. I can only hope that she’ll find a music that does her voice proud, which might mean slowing down a bit and dispensing with the eye-distracting aerobics. We want to know makes her heart flutter rather than witness her gymnastic dexterity.

Guitarist singer Daby Touré , when joined by his band, which included a gifted conga/percussionist, produced one of the best grooves of the festival. He was able to float his audience that swayed more than hopped or rocked, and the music was such that everyone wanted whatever song he was playing to continue.

The ‘night of the kora’ (Nuit de la Kora) proved to be a night to be remembered. Zal Sissokho, who opened the evening, introduced the headliner as a master of the instrument, and without exaggerating, that might have been a understatement. It is truly perplexing that Toumany Kouyaté is scarcely mentioned online and is not widely recognized among the world’s top five kora players, especially given his four decades of international performance; an oversight that is nothing short of baffling, mystifying, and stark reminder that life isn't always fair. Whether it’s a marketing blunder of spectacular magnitude or a collective failure of the our most discerning music critics remains anyone’s worst guess. Yet, within moments of his performance, Kouyaté unequivocally demonstrated his world-class talent.

To begin with, his technique is impeccable, as is the limpidity of his playing which is nothing less than awesome given the speed of his runs. But it’s his conceptual approach and relentless invention that distinguishes his playing. Through the rapid repetition of a select few strings, he masterfully rises to the occasion of singularity on his instrument as well as inducing trance-like states. At times, he aggressively attacks his strings, producing grating sounds that almost mimic the deliberately amp-distorted forays into the rock idiom. Conversely, he can waft his fingers over the strings with the delicate touch of a feather floating on a summer breeze; and his unique choice of strings allows him to play in keys that, in theory, the fixed position of the kora’s 21 strings should not permit. If one of the general complaints of the kora is that its advocates, unlike the guitarists, don’t experiment with different tunings, it’s because they choose to remain true to the tradition. That said, the tradition is being creatively challenged by artists such as Sona Jobarteh and the Moroccan group Zar Electric. Nevertheless, Kouyaté distinguishes himself by producing a unique sound and feel, a testament to his brilliance and ability to make the kora correspond to his inner visions. If there’s an event that embodies the essence of Les Nuits d’Afrique both as music and cultural festival, it is undoubtedly rooted in the kora, an instrument that has weathered the vicissitudes of time through the universal language of music.

In interview with Rich Beato, Sting explains that for music to sustain his interest "it must surprise" him. He surely speaks on behalf of the legions of jaded listeners, especially the older generation that has heard and seen it all. By that standard, Bab L’ Bluz, transplanted from Marrakesh to Paris, delivered the goods and much more. To begin with, mention must be made of their tantalizing time signatures, which gave all of their music and edge and unique point of departure. While the Arabic scale underpins their general sound, it is masterfully co-opted and revamped into progressive rock, culminating in sustained, ecstatic intervals.

Bab L’ Bluz has successfully carved out a very particularized niche sound and is deservedly gaining international recognition. The group is led by the dynamic and enchanting Yousra Mansour, who plays a double necked guitar (guembri), who on stage is all sound and frenzy, which is contagious. Of equal importance to the group dynamic is the musicianship of Brice Bottin, whose incomparable contrapuntal bass is the force field that drives the music that thrives on irreverence and refuses to recognize borders. Their performance was, without doubt, a festival highlight.

Supplying the festival deficit of pure melody was the group Les Mamans du Congo X Rrobin, whose only shortcoming is their unwieldy name. Among their many offerings, and on several occasions, they dared to slow down the tempo to ballad speed, refusing to be held hostage by the pervasive, conga-driven frenzy that characterizes much of the festival’s playlist. Their frequent harmonies were an unexpected treat, and their incantatory rhythms and hip-hop were met with wild approval. By my ear, they richly deserve a spot on the main stage for next year’s 40th.

I first caught the breathtakingly talanted, award-winning Djely Tapa during her breakout year in 2019. I described her voice as follows: “Blessed with a voice that can burn-dry a lake under a monsoon sky, its ear-pleasing purity and specific gravity are such that it keeps all other instruments and listeners in mesmerizing thrall.” I’m happy to report that six years later, her voice is even better: perhaps a touch lower in the register, but now richer, smoother, and more compelling,. And despite her physical gesticulations, she is in total control of her extended vocal range even as her body is transformed into the privileged site music requires for its pure expression. Her current repertoire seems to draw less from traditional Malian influences and more from her inner self, her soul, culminating in a continuous celebration of music’s power and the sheer joy of being alive in the present.

For listeners, who like myself, are drawn to vocal harmony like heliotropes turn to the sun, there wasn’t much on the menu until the last day. Supplying the harmony deficit in spades was hip-hop influenced Bic Tizon Dife and the amazing Las Karambas, the latter comprised of six, musically trained Latino women whose original material was spiced up with a variety of time signatures and a stage presence that combined an infectious ebullience and energy that everyone immediately connected to. Bring them back for next year.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

With its vibrant ateliers, diverse ethnic foods, and an incredible array of colors and traditional attire, culminating in the fascinating and eclectic Timbuktu Market place, Les Nuits d’Afrique serves as both an invitation to self-discovery and is a life-sized window into a brighter future — a more tolerant and egalitarian world, which implicitly places the onus on us, the festival goers, to convert the enriching cultural experience into lessons learned so that we can integrate them into our daily life.

As a festival that renews itself every year with resounding vigour and invention, Les Nuits consistently sets the tone and raises bar on what is possible; and for this, kudos to the organizers, who as usual didn’t miss a beat.

And happily, the beat goes on.

Stay tuned for the big 40th in 2026.


FESTIVAL PHOTOS

PHOTOS © JERRY PRINDLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHOTOS © ROBERT J. LEWIS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arts & Opinion, a bi-monthly, is archived in the Library and Archives Canada.
ISSN 1718-2034

 

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