Toubab Krewe: Roaring And Roiling

courtesy of the artist

The North Carolina band Toubab Krewe gives an old West African military song a cacophonous reworking.

"Mansani Cisse," a song drawn from West African military history more than a century old, has been played countless times since by griots, the region's renowned musical praise historians. In recent years, the tune has become a favorite of popular bands seeking to reconnect West African folklore with American blues. As it happens, the melody fits easily over a John Lee Hooker-style vamp, which has inspired a new wave of sometimes gimmicky renditions by bands in places like Mali and Senegal. For all these reasons, "Mansani Cisse" is not an easy song to treat in an original way. So give credit to Toubab Krewe — a young quintet out of Asheville, N.C. — for doing just that.

The members of Toubab Krewe are easy-going jammers, but they're also serious musicians with solid bona fides in West African music. They've traveled there to study and perform, individually and collectively, and their facility with a range of the region's instruments and folklore is impressive. They also have a key advantage over all those West African pop ensembles: They possess a seemingly innate understanding of the language and dynamics of rock music. This arrangement begins with an unadorned statement of the melody, before lifting into an ambling improvisation which showcases guitarist Drew Heller. But the song doesn't truly earn its place until its roaring, roiling final section: Ecstatic, cacophonous and joyously over-the-top, this is West African folklore as only a band of post-Hendrix American rockers could render it.

Banning Eyre is Senior Editor at www.afropop.org.