Ever since I heard a Kora play, I was in love with the instrument. And Toumani Diabate is delightful to listen to, his technical brilliance documented on loads of his CDs. “Recorded in one night, without re-takes or rehearsals” is not an uncommon piece of information to be found in the sleeves of his CDs.
And this collaboration between Balafon player Keletigui Diabate and Ngoni player Baseou Kouyate (“I speak Fula”, “Afrocubism”) is no exception. All are virtuosos in their own right, and together they will send you on a fast paced journey of string cascades, themes, melodies and improvisations that never feels rushed or forced. No instrument is dominating, but they rather playfully take turns to interweave the strengths and beautiful sounds of their music into a ballet of harmonic delight.
Pure bliss.
On the last weekend in (more or less) sunny September I went for a walk a long the Sussex coastline. I took the train to Eastbourne, then headed to the beach and followed it West towards Beachy Head. The beach is actually a cliff face with boulders and other rock debris that has fallen from the soft chalk cliffs, and further down towards the waterline the ground consists of slippery plates of chalky rock-bed. It’s an enjoyable scrabble over the rocks, and during the receding tide you have to be careful not to slip as the chalky stone can be very slippery, so naturally my eyes where fixed on the ground to search for a good foothold on every step.
Then I saw something that took a few moments to process in before I could make sense of it. I saw what looked like “imprints” of limpets in the rock. Shallow oval grooves the size of a limpet’s footprint covered the rock face as well as living limpets themselves. Close-up many of these imprints showed the detailed ridges of a limpet shell engraved in the rock. [click to continue…]
A thick cover of duckweed floats on Regent’s Canal this summer. It forms such a thick carpet that even the occasional passing barge can only temporarily clear the surface in its wake, before the green carpet once more looks as undisturbed as if had been laying there for months.
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