Lokua Kanza
Nkolo
World Village (www.worldvillagemusic.com)

Congolese musicians tend to fall into the rumba or soukous categories, but despite getting his start playing guitar in rumba bands, Lokua Kanza soon went further. Mastering a variety of instruments and absorbing all sorts of influences via conservatory training, he began crafting a brand of varied and adventurous Afro-pop that’s well represented on his latest release. Recorded in Paris, Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro, Nkolo has shades of all three and beyond. The tone is pretty soft throughout: none of these tracks are likely to be pounded out at high volume on a dancefloor, the possible exception being the peppy Brazilian groove of “On Vent du Soleil.” Instead, the disc’s lifeblood comes from how finely those soft edges are adorned with the right sort of instrumental sounds and production.

Kanza’s almost feminine-sounding singing is the framework that all else is built upon, such that subtleties like the samba rhythm that arises amid “Soki” or the hypnotically intoning choir of voices on “Famille” (a song that could and should have gone on longer than it does) come across as secondary where equal emphasis on all parts comprising the whole might have made the album stronger. Still, a voice like Kanza’s is a solid main attraction, stretching out with leisurely melancholy on the kalimba-punctuated “Elanga ya Muinda” and “Yalo,” easily overcoming the potentially gimmicky multi-tracking and odd structures of brief interludes “Mapendo” and “Loyenge” and often displaying the same balance of strength and seeming frailty as Cameroon’s Richard Bona (with whom Kanza has recorded). While I’d encourage any inclinations Kanza might have toward roughing his music up a little, his mellow mood here proves most pleasing if yours happens to be the same. - Tom Orr

CD and audio samples available at cdRoots

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