A Bowl of Stupid

As I mentioned in previous posts, I’ve become somewhat addicted to the KEXP ‘Song of the Day’ blogcast. It’s essentially become my only way to keep up on new and independent artists back in the States, as I roam thru Southeast Asia.

I was just in Saigon for a few days helping out a friend. And during the various car, boat and airplane trips I took along the way, I wound up listening to the same song almost the entire time — a song entitled “Ciew Mawele (Adham Shaikh’s Dusty Foot Remix)” by Issa Bagayogo from the 2007 compilation, Global Dancefloor on Six Degrees.

Here’s the MP3 of Ciew Mawele, available for immediate download through the KEXP website.

I usually try to avoid quoting directly from other sites, but this is just great music all around — the underlying melody and the integration of the techno remix. So for those of you who are just too lazy to head over to the KEXP site itself, the background on Issa Bagayogo follows:

Although he got his start playing traditional Malian instruments like the six-stringed kamele n’goni, Issa Bagayogo eventually became known as Techno Issa after he met French engineer Yves Wernert and began mixing traditional music with electronic beats. The resulting “Afro-techno” showed Malian musicians a new way, but despite frequent imitation, Techno Issa remains unique on his three albums released on Six Degrees, including the most recent Tassoumakan.

Unlike typical remix treatments of traditional music, which tend to overpower the source, Issa Bagayogo and Yves Wernert, along with a host of respected Mali musicians, effortlessly blend African and Western styles, creating a contemporary sound that remains purely West African. Adham Shaikh’s reworking ups the dance quotient a bit more, adding a deeper groove but still maintaining the integrity of the song.

Additionally, here’s a video for Issa Bagayogo’s “Dambalou”: