Song: SecondsArtist: Sierra Leone’s Refugee All-StarsAlbum: In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 This has great energy. It’s obviously a U2 cover, but the All-Stars completely made it their own. Best of all, they made it African without compromising the basic Western roots of the song. I wish more world music was like this. (By the way, Bob reviewed… Read more »
Label: Shout! Factory Released: April 1, 2008 While covers are a common thing, they are also tricky. Most artists end up falling into one of two traps: They either cover the best known rendition of the song rather than just the song itself or they lose all real sense of the song’s true nature. It’s a tough game making the… Read more »
January 23, 2008, Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Baltimore, Maryland Everyone remembers Ladysmith Black Mambazo for their contributions to Paul Simon’s Graceland, but the group, formed in the late 1950s in South Africa, has had a prolific recording career to which many people are oblivious. As an a capella group playing traditional African music, there isn’t a huge market for their… Read more »
Label: Heads Up International Released: August 7, 2007 Frankly, I wasn’t very familiar with Zap Mama prior to hearing the title track to this album about a month ago on my local independent radio station, WTMD. I liked the song well enough to track down the album, but once I got it, I found it to be a tough one… Read more »