Issa Bagayogo - Tassoumakan (Six Degrees)

My Afrobeat tastes run pretty catholic. Fela sits head and shoulders above any other contender and it’s his ample catalog I reach for when the urge for funk-inflected grooves from the Continent strikes. But Malian Issa Bagayogo’s vibrant and forward-reaching music has recently upset my carefully packed applecart. Over the past few years the n’goni-playing composer (an instrument family incidentally also favored by William Parker) has been steadily building an audience for his fusion of Wassoulou folk forms, Afro-dub breakbeats and Euro-trance electronica. His fourth album on Six Degrees, distributed domestically by Ryko, constitutes the most seamless and inviting blend of these elements yet. Fourteen tracks, nearly all in the four to five minute range present an instantly appealing diaspora of organically-combined ingredients. Wood flute dances with wah-wah guitar; the brittle strum of n’goni rides an undulating current of electronic bass; a choir of back-up singers responds to the rich tenor of Bagayogo’s voice and lateral visions of Fela’s charismatic orations slideshow through my mind. Tracks like the tensile funk of “Koroto” where acoustic and synthetic drums weave reverberating syncopations around an anchoring hip-shaking beat and “Kalan Nege” where keyboards and drum machines mimic balafon and djembe in the service of another slippery set of grooves establish the backbone of the album. Mellower tracks like “Djigui” and “Chauffer,” the latter imbued with some convincing blues guitar, convey the comfort of a dry desert sirocco with the leader’s own filament strings prominently featured, an exotic blend akin to the pungent fragrance of pit-roasted coffee beans. The lyrics, sung in Bagayogo’s native Bambaran tongue, might be unintelligible to most Western ears, but their emotional import crosses any linguistic lacuna. These are the sorts of sounds that subvert cultural borders, equally at home in a Koulikoran open air market or Parisian discotheque. As a sum they achieve a supple resonating depth beyond the reach of a lot of world beat, skillfully skirting the over-production and bombast that saddles so many efforts and yielding an album rich in replay value. Fela’s seat at the head of the table remains secure, but Bagayogo well-deserves a chair as a worthy apostle.