I was in Brussels last weekend for the 3-day Couleur Café music festival. It was my third Couleur Café – it’s becoming a bit of a tradition.

If you’ve never been you should definitely check it out next year. I think the venue is changing in a couple years, so next year will be your last chance to check-out the festival at Tour et Taxi, a great festival grounds on the edge of Brussels. It’s apparently moving to the Atomium or thereabouts.. we’ll see how that works out. (Is there still that hilariously frightening Charlemagne Palestine exhibit of weird puppets inside the Atomium?)

The music at Couleur Café is always good, the event is well-organized, you eat well, the weather is inevitably sunny – at least every year I’ve been – and Brussels is a very fun place to spend a weekend if you know/meet the right people. A big plus is that Couleur Café, like Solidays in Paris but minus the attitude, is in a city instead of a muddy field somewhere.

The line-up this year was pretty good. You can never see everyone at these festivals, especially if you’re going to survive the million chopes in the uncharacteristically hot, sunny Belgian weather, but I did manage to catch quite a few good shows.

Today we’ll hear some music from some of this year’s highlights including Bibi Tanga, Asian Dub Foundation, Khaled, Alpha Blondy, Patrice, Cesaria Evora and the Kasai All-Stars.

I didn’t know Bibi Tanga before the festival – great show. Asian Dub Foundation put on a good, loud and sweaty set as usual. Patrice really rocked the crowd. Unfortunately for me, the Kasai All-Stars set had some of the worst sound I’ve ever heard. I was really looking forward to seeing them but the show was almost unlistenable due to bad mixing, bad mics.. oh well. Alpha Blondy was, well, an Alpha Blondy show with plenty of smoke in the air and dazed franco-reggae youth in the sun. Cesaria Evora looked like she’d seen a ghost or suffered a stroke, but her music still goes so well with the nice weather. (And no, Hocus Pocus didn’t actually play with her. That’s just a 20syl remix I like.. a nod to the Paris hiphop scene.) And we all know that Khaled is classic.

There was much, much more – some that I saw, much that I didn’t – but that’s enough for a big weekend. I’m still tired but Couleur Café is well worth the trip every year.

Big love to the whole Belgium crew – always a pleasure to see you guys.

PS Happy Canada Day!

Bibi Tanga – It’s The Earth That Moves
Asian Dub Foundation – Flyover
Alpha Blondy – Brigadier Sabary
Cesaria Evora – Petit Pays (20syl remix)
Kasai Allstars – Quick As White
Patrice – Fear Rules
Khaled – Raba Raba

There are so many amazing African musicians we’ll never get to hear.

Only a small percentage of musicians ever have the resources or time to record, particularly those from the world’s poorest continent.

It’s lucky, then, when previously unknown musicians – at least outside their own countries – bubble to the surface and get some recognition before they’re too old, forgotten or dead.

Cape Verdian singer, Herminia, is an example of a late discovery. She’s been singing since she was 6 years old and making local recordings since the age of 12 but it was only fourty years later she finally got noticed by Cesaria Evora. This allowed her to eventually record the 1998 release, Coraçon Leve.

Despite comparisons between Herminia and Evora herself, however, the album didn’t get much attention.

Lucky for us she stuck with it, and nearly ten years later she released a second album, Do Sal. Now 65, Herminia’s voice still sounds vibrant and the music that surrounds is great; it’s full of nice guitar and sharp percussion.

If today’s track doesn’t get you dancing around the living room with your lady, nothing will. Great find.

Herminia – Antonim Marta

Benn loxo listener and frequent behind the scenes contributor, Henri, introduced me to Sara Tavares the other day. It’s been raining drizzle as only Paris can lately.. plus I have a nagging cold. This calm, Luso-guitar couldn’t have come at a better time.

Sara Tavares is a Portuguese Cape Verdian from Lisbon. She’s been getting a lot of attention lately, including a nomination for the BBC’s 2007 World Music Awards.

Tavares’ voice reminds me of The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler. Remember them? Their 1992 album, Blind, is a classic of the rainy-day-indie genre.

Today’s track comes off her second album, 2006′s Balancê. Tavares wrote, arranged and produced the whole thing.

As Henri pointed out, the rest of the album isn’t quite as strong as this track but it’s still worth a listen. In particular, “Lisboa Kuya” has a nice sound but I’ll leave that for you to discover.

Sara Tavare – Guisa

Today we continue with the Luso-African theme with a guest post by Benn loxo listener, Ian:

“Joao and Ramiro Mendes, otherwise known as the Mendes Brothers, are probably the most influential artists in the Lusophone African world–despite their lack of name recognition. In 1978 the brothers immigrated from Fogo, Cape Verde to Brocton, Massachusetts, the epicenter of the Cape Verdean diaspora in the US. Shortly afterwards, they formed a band to play traditional Cape Verdean and Angolan styles like coladera, tabanka and semba. During the ’80s, the Mendes Brothers band built a following in the local Cape Verdean community.

In 1991 the brothers started their own label, MB Records, to produce and distribute their own and other Cape Verdean artists’ music. Brother Ramiro enrolled in the prestigious Berklee College of Music to study film scoring and commercial production, graduating in 1993. While Ramiro was still in school, the brothers produced an award-winning song for Saozinho. This lead to production work for big-name Luso-African stars, including Waldemar Bastos and Cesaria Evora. (In fact, Ramiro Mendes penned “Angola,” which became one of Evora’s biggest hits and her signature tune.)

Musically, the Mendes Brothers are interesting in that they have acted both as standard-bearers and pioneers. Their earlier albums are mostly straightforward CV pop; they share the slick production values common to most popular African music of the ’80s and ’90s but use distinctly Cape Verdean and Angolan rhythms. Along with their production work, their early albums are credited with popularizing these previously under-represented sounds on dancefloors both in Africa and around the world.

More recently, the brothers’ style has broadened to incorporate some of the feel of hip hop and R&B. Their latest record, “Cabo Verde/Kabu Verdi,” from which the songs below are taken, eschews the synthesizers and drum machines of much Afropop for the more subdued, naturalistic production characteristic of acts like india.irie or Les Nubiennes.

Given the sound of “Cabo Verde,” it’s not surprising to learn that Ramiro, based in Los Angeles and working under the moniker “Dr. Ra,” now produces hip hop, reggaeton and R&B tracks for a variety of new artists. One of them, an American-born Cape Verdean rapper/crooner named Anthony “TC” Cruz, is trying to popularize something he calls “three-step,” which, he claims, “brings hip hop back to the motherland” by fusing it with the 3/4 feel of Cape Verdean bandera.”

Thanks a lot, Ian. Great music. You can grab your own copy over at Calabash.

Mendes Brothers – Cabo Verde / Kabu Verdi
Mendes Brothers – Angolamania
Mendes Brothers – Madjon Di Djarfogu

I’ve been on this Portuguese-African kick lately, partly inspired by Benn loxo listener, Ian. You’ll hopefully be hearing from him soon.

In the meantime here’s a great tune by talented Cabo Verdian singer Terezinha Araújo. She has a unique pan-Portuguese West-African style, incorporating elements of Angolan, Portuguese, Cabo Verdian and Guinea-Bissauian music.

Araújo was discovered when she was just a little girl by none other than Miriam Makeba. She was performing in Conakry where her family was living in exile from Cabo Verde when she caught Makeba’s ear. By the age of 17 she was singing across West Africa and the communist bloc countries. There’s this great photo of her at the time in the album booklet sporting a wool sweater straight out of a 1970s French ski slope, singing her heart out at a Moscow conference centre.

Following Cabo Verde’s independence she eventually moved back to Cabo Verde where she still lives today. Her first solo recording, Nôs riqueza, was released on Nocturne in 2004.

Terezinha Araújo – Minino di criaçôn

I was wading through the mediatheque a few weeks back and stumbled upon a re-issue of a 1973 record by Cabo Verdian guitarist, Humbertona. Great find. The music immediately transports you to the Cabo Verde islands, and the original recording’s sound has been nicely cleaned-up.

The people behind this release are Morabeza Records, a label devoted to promoting Cabo Verde’s musical heritage, both old and new. Morabeza is actually a revival of a great label that existed during the 1960s and 70s in Portuguese-speaking Africa. Most of Morabeza’s recordings were bought or re-released by the more famous Lusafrica.

You might not know Humbertona directly but he played with Bonga (who, strangely, I’ve never featured on Benn loxo) on celebrated recordings in 1972 and 1974. The man was also a prominent figure in the struggle for Cabo Verdian independence. They didn’t get their independence until 1975 so albums like this, released in 1973, were part of an effort to assert an independent culture. Needless to say, when originally released this album was confiscated in his country by Portuguese authorities.

If you’re curious you can find some more info and clips here.

Humbertona – Tchop Tchop

My friend Thierry passed me this album at the office today courtesy of one of our clients, RFI. What a nice surprise for a Tuesday afternoon.

Manuel Lopes Andrade, or Tcheka, is a young Cap Verdian musician who has been playing music seriously since about the age of 15 (he’s 32 now).

He sings in Creole over acoustic guitar and West African rhythms, notably the batuque style. Since starting to work with Cesoria Evora’s producer, José Da Silva, he’s released two albums.

From the RFI website,

“The winner of the RFI World Music Award 2005 is Tcheka, a musician from Cape Verde renowned for putting his own particular spin on a traditional sound known as batuque. Tcheka, who has recorded two albums to date, brought the house down at the RFI World Music Award ceremony held in Dakar on 10 November.”

Today’s tracks come off Tcheka’s latest, Nu Monda, released in late 2005 on Lusafrica.

Tcheka – Makriadu
Tcheka – Rozadi Rezadou