When Omar Sosa’s An East African Journey appeared on The Roots Music Report’s Top 50 World Music Album Chart, it certainly piqued my interest in this acclaimed project.  The seed for this album was planted when Cuban-born jazz pianist and percussionist Omar Sosa departed on a 2009 tour of eight Francaise locations in East Africa. Track 5, “Che Che,” includes backing vocals from two musicians (Mola Sylla and Childo Tomas) also on the tour sponsored by the French government, TV and Centre National du Cinéma.  Sosa connected and recorded with traditional artists in Madagascar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Burundi, Kenya, Zambia and Mauritus.    

While familiar with piano, bass and drums, listeners will also find joyful colorings on An East African Journey of such instruments as kalimba, valiha, nyatiti, tambur, marovany, lokanga, krar, umuduri, kalumbu, ravanne. For example, three tracks (“Tsiaro Tsara,” “Veloma E” and “Dadilahy”) feature established valiha player and singer, Rajery, playing his instrument best described as a bamboo tube zither with 18 strings. Sosa’s piano provides a foundation of jazzy effervescence to support his collaborators’ vocals, percussion and string sounds. While I certainly appreciated the musicians who joined Sosa on vocals and percussion instruments, I especially enjoyed the musical conversations presented with Olith Ratego’s nyatiti (an 8-string lyre), Dafaala Elhag’s tambur (a 5-string lyre), Monja Mahafay’s marovany (24-steel string zither), Seleshi Damessae’s krar (a 5-string pentatonic lyre), Steven Sogo’s umudrui (gourded bow), Monja Mahafay’s lokanga (3-string gourded fiddle) and Abel Ntalasha’s kalumba (musical bow).                           

Closing the album on a more improvisational piece, “Ravann Dan Jazz” (meaning “Ravanne Meets Jazz”) documents a unique session that took place on the island of Mauritius with Menwar, a pioneer of traditional Sega music who plays a large goat-skinned drum (ravanne) and provides a spoken message in Creole. Back in France, and presumably for a fuller and more contemporary sound, additional tracks were added (by Steve Arguelles and Christophe ‘Disco’ Minck) with drums, percussion, double bass, moog voyager, synthesizers, modular effects and backing vocals. With its blending of traditional and contemporary world instruments, An East African Journey is an engaging, tastefully rendered adventurous musiclogue. (Joe Ross, Roots Music Report)