In the same way as you can wait for a book you've been wanting to read without knowing of its existence, as I was with This is Memorial Device, (which I reviewed on here a few weeks back), you can be the same about a record you've been waiting to hear all year without realising it. Such is the case with myself and Republique Amazone by Les Amazones D'Afrique, which came out on my mother's birthday back in March but which I've only just chanced upon.
Powered by an all star female collective of West African musicians, (something of a supergroup), the record is a socially charged, funky, rhythmic, and sensual pearl! Sung in French, English, Bambara and Fon, with gender empowerment a constant, strident concern, it's a beauteous ocean of beats and melody lines with the women's voices weaving and harmonising across the music pattern, every bit as freeing and utterly liberating as an hour in a flotation tank.
For a fuller picture go here. In the meantime it's more than enough for me to come upon this sparkling album as the skies above Newcastle darken and we head onwards into autumn.
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