Bibi Tanga & The Selenites
Tagged with: Bibi Tanga Selenites Dunya Professeur Inlassable It's The Earth That Moves
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Born in Bangui, BIBI TANGA is attracted to groove in all its shapes.
Curtis Mayfield, James Brown, Sly Stone and also Fela, the TPOK Jazz of Franco in Kinshasa, the National Guinean Bembeya Jazz remain his references. All bodied in 2000 into his first album “Le vent qui souffle “ marked by his encounter with THE MALKA FAMILY and HIPI MUSIC label.
The “Yellow Gauze” album is marked by an encounter with LE PROFESSEUR INLASSABLE, another music junkie who started devoting himself to « a fundamental research », and it's been released by l'inlassable disQue.
Le Professeur Inlassable released “Leçon Numéro Un (Lesson Number One)” on ICI D’AILLEUR label in 2004, a record that displays an obvious signature in terms of musical genre blending and organic ambiences.
“Yellow Gauze” has no rules. Influenced by hip-hop as much as Gospel music, funk or jazz, this album evokes a musical kaleidoscopic vision, warm and resolutely urban.
In 2008, the duo evolved into a powerful band, the Selenites (the moon inhabitants). They recorded the album 'Dunya' to be released in France and Europe in February 2010 and in May 2010 in the USA via Nat Geo Music label.
"Rulebook-ignoring esoterica from Africa via Paris"
"When the music of Bibi Tanga wafts in your general direction, it's quite easy to visualise his record collection. You imagine there's plenty of Curtis Mayfield and Sly Stone in there, packed in alongside the albums of Fela Kuti, Franco, Gil Scott-Heron and Arrested Development. But that these inspirations are clearly discernible isn't a criticism. Sure, he jumps around all over the shop - funk, soul, hip-hop, Afrofunk - but this is no scattergun approach. Instead Bibi, born in the Central African Republic but raised in the Parisian suburbs, moulds these influences to create something both invigorating and bearing his own signature. And that his music, unleashed over the course of three albums thus far, finds a kindred spirit in Sun Ra's cosmic Afrofuturism is born out by the derivation of his band's name - The Selenites were the moon-dwelling civilisation in HG Wells' The First Men In The Moon. (Biography by Nige Tassell 2010 - from the Womad Artists page)
Videos of this Artist
Albums by this Artist
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It's The Earth That Moves (MP3 EP) - Bibi Tanga & the Selenites
It's The Earth That Moves (MP3 EP)
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Dunya - Bibi Tanga & The Selenites
Dunya embraces the diversity – but not the immediacy – of the download age.
(Angus Taylor 2010-01-26)
The third album by Central African Republic/Parisian polymath Bibi Tanga is a remarkable bouillabaisse of musical and other artistic styles: an abstract, slow burning, film score funker with a hip, esoteric edge. But be warned: it takes a while to decamp to the dancefloor from the chill-out lounge.
Like the eclectic Malian chanteuse Rokia Traoré, Tanga is the child of a diplomat, and a youth spent shuttling back and forth from Paris to Bangui and a host of other countries appears to have left him with a ‘musique sans frontiers’ ultra-global perspective. He and his band the Selenites (named after the lunar race from HG Wells’s The First Men in the Moon) effortlessly assimilate soul, funk, jazz, hip hop and afrobeat, to name five palpable reference points.
On first listen Dunya (meaning “existence” in Sango) sounds sparse and minimal. But, in fact, there’s quite a lot going on, as dissonant samples and loping beats (from longtime collaborator and producer Le Professeur Inlassable) interact with tense vibrato strings and doodling keyboards (courtesy of violinist and co-arranger Arthur Simonini). The songs are sung, rapped and drawled in English and Sango, and the whole project has an arch, fashion-house obliqueness straight from the artier parts of the City Of Lights.
Some aspects to these soundscapes are an acquired taste. A few of the languid, near horizontal grooves and off-the-cuff lyrics walk the line between studied nonchalance and paucity of substance. The crawling Gospel Singers seems almost deliberately ironic in being such a detached, stylised tribute to such a stirring musical form.
Even so, the slower first half of the disc passes pleasantly whereas the more galvanic second half consolidates its appeal. Here Tanga unleashes his Larry Graham-style slap-pop-bass during the spirited Be Africa and previously released bonus track It’s the Earth That Moves, giving his lush creations legs.
So while a shuffle of the tracks might have generated more peaks and troughs, this album’s gradual metamorphosis makes its own kind of sense. Blasé yet painstakingly assembled, Dunya embraces the diversity – but not the immediacy – of the download age.Taken from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/vhfd
Management Details
Nat Geo Music label.