------------------------- Cidew - Tracklist Votemania feat. Naïni Diabaté Jantô Interlude Acide constat La vie est une drôle d'école Bassakilici Los malianos Téké Téké Nyengo Votemania feat. Naïni Diabaté

RAGE - Cidew Browsing through an average music store's collection of West African music, the amount of available titles from Mali is usually large. Most of its musicians are from a number of families so you could easily be confusing one Kouyaté for another. Musically, there's a wide range of styles but they all have a particular Malinese flavour. In the flood of internationally released albums from Mali, until this year there wasn't one that touched on the local hip hop. The newly released hip hop cd 'Cidew' by Rage (February 2000) thus is kind of revolutionary. Rage - Cidew (The messenger) We first met with Rage (consisting of Koly, Kokko, Sir Alpeco and Justice) in 1997 in the Malinese capital of Bamako. The group had just released a first cassette, the 2-track 'Votemania', sponsored by NGO's and aiming to move the Malinese youth to take part in elections. Featuring the well known griotte (bard/singer) Nainy Diabaté, Rage allowed hip hop to enter the Malinese music world. Local rappers had been paying close attention to the Senegalese, who had developed a huge rap following at home and in neighbouring countries. Bamako is not very close to Dakar, but some people have family ties and there are cultural exchanges within the region. Several Senegalese crews, including Yat-Fu and PBS had been performing in Bamako. Rage was also aware of what was happening in Senegal. Taking the train to Dakar every now and then or the plane to Paris for studies, the group is influenced by a wide range of styles including rap, Malinese griot music and r&b. 'Cidew' ('the messenger') by Rage is out on French hip hop label Le Maquis. With distribution in France, the local Malinese community will be happy to get some new sounds from the home country. But the album will attract the attention of others too. With raps in Bambara (Malinese language), Wolof (from Senegal) and French, the messages are sure to hit the target. On the production side there's some interesting things going on. Lack of heavy beat equipment is a known problem in many parts of West Africa. Rage went around that by recording not just in Mali (using the studio of the famous singer Salif Keita) but doing part of the production in France. Sometimes the fact shows that vocals were partly done in a non-hip hop studio, but that adds charm to the album, in the same way that tapes recorded with low-budget equipment sometimes have more character than a clean harddisk recording. The instrumentals that Rage use on 'Cidew' have been part of an interesting experiment, playing Malinese traditional instruments over New York style beats. The services of griots Toumani & Nainy Diabaté were used here. Kora (the well known West-African snare instrument) was heard over hip hop beats before, with other - mainly Senegalese - crews. But the way in which Rage uses the combination is most nice. The kora and other sampled or live instruments, with Bambara raps and singing make for a new music that is destined to have a second chapter soon. As said before, 'Cidew' will be welcomed by different people: hip hop heads from Mali and abroad, so-called 'world music' listeners, griot music diggers... Rage also has potential of scoring one of those Francophone hits that usually make their way into the Francophone world through RFI radio and other channels. They will have to continue working a bit though on the production and their flows. 'Cidew' is a first album with both the freshness and the inexperience that come with a first effort. Rage are further building the foundations of a Malinese hip hop movement so a whole school of emcees will have to learn from what they have been doing to create this album. All in all this is a good buy, there's about 3 songs that we would categorize as classics. Rage makes hungry for more hip hop from this group and other Malinese crews! Their label Le Maquis also have a compilation album out soon called 'Rap sans visa', with material from rappers originating in the Francophone world (Antilles, Senegal, Ivory Coast etc). Review by Juma-4 for Madunia, © 2000

::: o r d e r i n g ::: :: Buy Cidew online :: To order the cd from FNAC, a French music distributor, click here. They also have a realaudio preview of each song. To order the cd from Alapage, also French, click here.