Message From Home
Gokh-bi System "Message From Home.Suma Deuk Waay" CD Review
Larry Parnass, Thursday, March 14, 2002, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Northampton, MA
The Gokh-Bi System, a rap and hip-hop group from Senegal, has played in the area before, but not with a stunning recorded statement at the ready. "Message From Home" (World Rhythms) beautifully packages this five-member group's arresting sound, lifted from the streets and violence of their native Dakar.
This recording, more than any I've heard, unites voices and drums. Each pushes the other to say more, be more, achieve more. The interplay ratchets up the intensity. I defy any listener to come away from the opening track, "Suma Deuk Waay," unmoved.
Producer Tony Vacca, a globe-trotting percussionist from the Valley, presents the Gokh-Bi System with the grace of a skilled ambassador. For the project, Vacca tapped the talents of Massamba Diop, the tama drummer for one of the most successful Senegalese singers, Baaba Maal.
Thorough and interesting accompanying notes with the CD explain the message of that first track - an appeal pounded out with equal insistence by the tama and mbung bung drums and by the layered words of its rappers. What they say is this: "Come to my neighborhood if you want to know who I am."
It is the perfect opening, for the next 11 tracks do that and more. Listeners are taken to the Senegalese neighborhoods where life pulses just this way. The words and percussion move together, as inseparable as water and flora in a tide pool.
The tracks carry titles like "Identity," "Human Rights," "Children, "Africa," and many other words that are left untranslated - "Xaesal," "Siburay," "Harissa." The pieces seem not to be composed, but rather lifted wholesale from life.
"Identity" employs a little turntable scratching, playfully linking the sound to another hemisphere.
Voices rise and subside, sometimes soft and searching, other times pleading and shouting. The voices fully become rhythmic instruments and make the Gokh-Bi System's music more insistent than other, more melodic examples of world music. The voices knit as tightly as in a cappella singing. They are charismatic beyond belief, even if you can't understand, word for word, what they are saying. The number of layers present here, and the interplay of tones, pitches and background motifs, is staggering. Sounds pop up and chime across the entire spectrum.
The notes make clear how pointed many of these messages are. They are veritable sermons, many of them about God. The lovely and mournful "Xaesal," which features Joe Sallins on bass, laments she who would despise her blackness. "Here I come to praise my color," the accompanying translation says of the song. "Women of Dakar, I sing the divine beauty of your black skin."
"Human Rights" contains some singing in English, with a refrain that calls for activism. The meaning of this project is never in doubt, though. It takes listeners deep into the neighborhood, with expert guides. The trip can't be compared to anything else I know. It must be taken.
|
|
