Changing pop

Sankai's soukous brings a little Africa to Somerville

by Alan Waters

In theory, if you concentrate enough hard-working musicians and enough devoted fans of their type of music in one place, you get a local music scene, with the creative interchange and competitive pressure generating a standard of excellence. This has actually happened with African pop music in Boston during recent years. The latest and most accomplished band to emerge from the Afropop scene, Sankai, will celebrate the release of their homonymous debut CD with a performance at Johnny D's this Saturday, September 7.

Sankai's music is rooted in modern Zairean soukous, but they're not exactly an orthodox soukous band. Fellyko Mbuji-Mayi Tshikala plays lead guitar, sings lead vocals, and arranges the band's material. Although he's from Kinshasa, he spent nearly a decade in Paris working with such legendary soukous stars as Tabu Ley Rochereau, Papa Wemba, and Emeneya. He sings in French, Lingala, and his native Tshiluba; on stage he directs the band with a commanding and graceful presence.

During our conversation he stresses that Sankai do not want to cling too tightly to the soukous label. "We don't follow rules that say, `This is blues', `This is funk', `This is reggae.' We just play music -- in the way that we feel it." Certainly you can hear a broad range of influences woven into the band's repertoire, including zouk and South African township jive. As a guitarist Fellyko admits to a deep admiration for B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix, as well as for the tradition of great African guitar players from Dr. Nico to Diblo Dibala.

Sankai are blessed with a fine rhythm section of Ralph Gasparello on bass and John Glenshaw on drums, two veterans of Boston's international-music circuit. What's striking about Sankai is the way the bass and drums create a pulse that has the locked-on feeling of a metronome but still breathes and feels natural. Glenshaw describes how the band put together the album's seven tracks: "It has a solid, disco-wise, dance sense, but it's also a live recording, and that's what we were going after." With the aid of John Hanley on second guitar, Gasparello and Glenshaw generate grooves that are fluid and lean. Dido Bha contributes backing vocals and supplies what is known in the Zairean context as animation -- that rave-up combination of bodily movement and verbal declamation designed to bring the audience to a feverish pitch of excitement.

This past spring the band were well received at the Louisiana International Festival in Lafayette, Louisiana, and at the Houston International Festival. Fellyko explains that the word "sankai" can be translated from Tshiluba as an exhortation to "get happy" or "get enjoyment," and in the videotaped performance from the closing night of the Lafayette festival you can see this message come to life. Their set is filled with improvisational segments, dramatic tempo-bending endings, and spicy guitar solos. This is a band who are confident in what they're doing, who are not content to languish.

Gasparello's take is that "we want to create something of our own and to push it out into the world." Concerning the obstacles to launching an African music project here in North America, he adds, "People will come, people will enjoy it. They don't always want to go out and hear the same kind of music every night. It's the ultimate alternative music."

In recent years African pop music, as it's reached an ever wider audience, has tended to slip into commercial and formulaic molds. There's been a recognizable and pervasive "Paris influence" on a lot of Francophone African music. Recordings tend to be made by producers as opposed to musicians. The stuff just seems to get cranked out, without much care for the details and subtleties of the styles. But then a band like Sankai come along with an approach that says, "Hey, things don't have to go in this direction."

"Soukous is changing now," Fellyko points out. "It's a great music, but we want to add something to it." Indeed, Sankai are now poised to make their contribution, to move the music forward, to help it change and to help us to "get happy."

Sankai will be performing for their CD-release party this Saturday, September 7, at Johnny D's in Somerville.