While on tour in East Africa in 2009, pianist/composer Omar Sosa embarked on a musical safari, equipped not with a rifle, but with mobile recording equipment (and a very able sound engineer, Patrick Destandeau), a love of African musical cultures, and a vast imagination. Now, 12 years later, Sosa releases An East African Journey (available March 5), which combines exquisite recordings of traditional musicians with augmentations from Sosa and colleagues—the latest chapter in Sosa’s long-standing fascination with blending the folkloric and the modern, the acoustic and the electronic.

Omar Sosa
An East African Journey (Otá Records)
A review
In 2009, with his Afreecanos Trio, pianist/composer Omar Sosa toured through seven East African countries—Madagascar, Zambia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi, Kenya, and Mauritius—and in each, thanks to the tour arranger Alliance Français, he was introduced to and, with one exception, able to record local musicians performing on their turf on traditional instruments. Coproducer Steven Argüelles and Sosa started brainstorming about editing, arranging, and augmenting the material, but it wasn’t until 2016 that they were able to find time together to begin the process. Two recording sessions followed in 2018. In the first, overdubs were done by Argüelles (drums and percussion) and Christophe “Disco” Minck (double bass, synths, and modular effects). In the second session, Sosa added acoustic piano. The result, An East African Journey, is a cross-cultural gem of a project that discovers enlivening connections—open doors—between musical traditions.

The arresting recordings of the traditional artists are given pride of place, with a sensitive, respectful, and inspired augmentation from Sosa and his colleagues in a jazz dialect. Every track delivers an exceptional correspondence between Sosa (and his European colleagues) and the African artists, whose material is allowed to shine. (The tracks have a lived-in quality, with nothing forced—not surprising seeing how long the project gestated.) Sosa’s exquisite sensitivity to rhythm and structure, fueled by his native exuberance, enable him to enrich the original recordings with augmentations that are sometimes quite subtle—a rhythmic accent on the piano here, a whisper of an electronic effect there—and sometimes much more explicit, with his European trio providing a simultaneous composition that might stand on its own if the original field recording were to disappear. Highlights abound, and in several places, the sympathetic resonance between the field recordings and Sosa’s augmentations reaches a sublime pitch.

The album opener, “Tsiaro Tsara,” sets the stage beautifully. It begins with a lush introduction on solo piano before Rajery, an established musician from Madagascar, joins in on his vahila, an 18-string bamboo tube zither. Rajery provides a gently propulsive rhythmic bed over which Sosa floats his piano. Rajery’s “Veloma E,” which opens with a beautiful vahila solo, offers polished Afro-pop, and Sosa makes a subtle but enriching piano contribution.

“Thuon Mok Logo,” features Kenya’s Olith Ratego on the nyatiti, an eight-string lyre, and offers a sweet and seamless blend of the folkloric, electronics, and jazz piano. The song tells how God strengthened Ratego as he recovered from an illness. With its mesmerizing rhythm and Ratego’s otherworldly vocal, this is music intended to alter consciousness. Sosa and his colleagues contribute subtle accents that reinforce and counter the rhythmic flow.

Seleshe Damessae—a well-known Ethiopian master of the krar, a five-string bowl-shaped lyre with a banjo-like sound, and a singer of great vocal authority—contributes two quite different highlights. “Che Che,” which sounds like African R&B and features a terrific piano contribution, imitates a galloping horse. “Tizeta,” an ethereal ode to a beautiful woman, provides another exceptional blend of the various elements and introduces an almost Asian quality.

There’s something similar to the feel of a Scottish reel in “Sabo,” from Madagascar’s Monja Mahafay, who invokes the spirits who escort a departed soul to the entrance of the world of the ancestors, as noted by Scott Price in his informative liner notes. On this track, nicely framed by Sosa, Mahafay plays the lokanga, a three-string violin, and vocalizes in a traditional drum sound.

Burundi’s Steven Sogo, a master of the umuduri, a single-string bow with a resonator gourd, sings exuberantly of a family meeting around the fire at grandmother’s house, and Sosa’s piano raises a smile.

The album’s 13 tracks offer an ear-opening sampler of East African musical traditions, whose folkloric instruments, some rudely fashioned from the simplest components, nevertheless communicate sophisticated, spirit-lifting messages. It is Sosa’s unique genius to marry these traditions to a contemporary, jazz-based sensibility, opening a conversation that explicitly reveals the connections between two musical worlds.

P.S. This is a recording that will benefit tremendously from a good audio system or a good set of headphones.

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© 2021 Mel Minter