Pitchfork

After rushes on gnarly West African music over the past year-- particularly records by Saharan trance bands Tartit, Etran Finatawa, and the fierce Tinariwen-- the focus is sliding down the coast's bulb. This comp of lyric acoustic guitar work from the Diabate family is the third Guinean release Sterns Africa has offered this year, alongside a reissue of a Bembeya Jazz Ensemble retrospective and a singles collection from the Guinean state-run label Syliphone. In 1958, France had passed around a referendum to their colonies for a new constitution; Guinea declined to sign and, voilà, independence. As would seem prudent with any baby country-- especially one nominally under socialism-- leader Ahmed Sekou Touré's government started sponsoring dance bands to try to foster a sense of cultural unity. (The Diabate brothers' father, Sidiki, was the head of the first ensemble under Touré.)

So, strange then that half of this disc was recorded in 1983 in neighboring Ivory Coast, whose capital, Abidjan, turned into destination for musicians after the economy sunk and Touré proved himself a dictator (in service of the general good, of course). But African musicians have always held a dignified cool about expressing their angst-- even iconic hothead Fela sounded unbothered in his prime, though Lagos was probably a lot more dangerous and dirty than England in the 1970s, where brats on the dole found plenty to complain about.

Not to say that it's protest music, because it's not. If anything, the central charm here is how damn unhurried and relaxed the Diabates sound. Even when they ornament-- and the music is so harmonically and rhythmically simple that it's almost all ornament-- it's more amble than flash; on the closing "Solo Virtuose", Papa Diabate has about seventeen minutes all to himself, so he spreads out, sometimes lapsing into arpeggios alongside brother Sékou for the sake of mutual hypnosis.

Much of Syliphone's dance material has a Latin inflection, and even though the Diabates are distinct in their more lyric, acoustic sound, they offer fusions like "Dembati Galant", which features kora-- an African harp-- spilling out over ecstatic flamenco whirls. I'm not sure what kind of imperialistic impressions were at work here, but the notes suggest a popularity of Cuban music at the time, something I'd associate more closely with Congo and the DRC, where musicians formed their own take on rumba. Whatever and whyever it is, it's probably best not to think about it too much, because reasonable, two-chord approximations of infinity's bliss are pretty hard to find, and they fumble toward it at least a couple times.

The Diabates were from Guinea, but everyone knows what a porch feels like. Borders aside, there's at least a few elegant, universal approaches to simple alchemy, and African Virtuoses-- a bunch of guys with acoustic guitars-- can safely count themselves as one.