*** Sibèba

HIJAS DEL SOL

(Intuition)

Listen to these two young women singers from Equatorial Guinea (look at your map of West Africa for location) and you're quickly aware you're hearing something singular. Originally an a cappella act (the opening tune is a sample), Piruchi and her niece Paloma Loribo Apo moved to Spain from their native land and fell into the hands of Demetrio Muñiz La Vallée, a Cuban producer with a gift for Afropoppish understatement. Framed by sparse percussion and acoustic guitars, the singers sound like some wild cross-cultural hybrid. Motown meets Sweet Honey in the Rock?

After admiring the ravishingly close harmonies of this album (whose title means "Daughters of the Sun"), check out the original lyrics. There's lots of Afro-modernism in the words, in spite of Sibèba's worry about losing their "tradition," a theme of several songs. Boys are told to get condoms to avoid AIDS, Spanish police are dissed. Few African singers obsessed with "tradition" sound so refreshingly cosmopolitan and wise beyond their years.

-- Norman Weinstein