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All aboard for the Africa Express

28.07.11

Africa Unmistakable was formed in 2006, after former Blur front man, Damon Albarn, invited a diverse group of UK and US musicians to Mali to join forces with local musicians . The members of the band are interchangeable and each performance is spontaneous and partly improvised – so no two performances are verbatim the same. Emily Jupp asks longstanding member, Jesse Hackett about bringing African music to a western audience.

Jesse Hackett, one of the initial members of Africa Express, is reorganising his music collection. “I’ve been running about on a few little lyrical errands – trying to download some of my tunes from my phones from the last two years – like a sonic adventures.” And there’s a lot of downloading to do. Aside from being a keyboardist with the Gorillaz, creating electronic/soul group Elmore Judd , bagging his own broadcast slot on independent radio NTS, and doing a European tour with his band, Owiny Sigoma Belt set up with musicians from Nariobi and Kenya , he has also found time to collaborate once again with Africa Express, a group which originated in 2006 when Damon Albarn took a set apart of musicians – including Jamie-T, Zane, Fatboy Slim and Martha Wainwright to Mali to gratify Bassekou Kouyaté, Mali’s finest n’goni (a type of lute) trouper, and other local musicians.

Source: The Independent (blog)