EIF music reviews: Youssou N'Dour | Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Harry Baker | Ustatshakirt Ensemble

MUSIC

Youssou N'Dour ★★★★★

Usher Hall

If the Edinburgh International Festival is truly where the world comes to play, a Youssou N'Dour concert is the most exuberant expression of that intention with a diasporic audience geared up to party, Senegal-style. N’Dour’s latest album, Mbalax, is named after his country’s signature pop sound, rendering modern Afropop on traditional instruments with an irresistible dash of Cuban rhythm. Singing in the Wolof tongue, his lyrical message may have been lost on large swathes of this capacity crowd but, with the seats removed from the Usher Hall stalls, the message came through loud and clear – we were all invited to join N’Dour and his sensational 13-piece band on the dancefloor.

N’Dour is a superstar presence though he wore his status lightly with his focus on channelling the emotion of the music through his soaring tenor. He is a natural born soul man, offering moments of pure vocal expression but also bringing a gruffer, rootsier tone to the table when required as well as relishing his role as benevolent party host. His percussionist gleefully took on MCing duties over the course of the set, but N’Dour playfully held up his microphone to amplify the djembe drums at one point, while an acrobatic dancer only added to the energy, flipping over his bandmates in an ecstatic display.

There were sonic surprises along the way with fluid flute added to the vibrant mix, while his Hendrix-inspired guitarist contained multitudes, emitting gamelan-like sounds alongside a more traditional hit of highlife joy. N’Dour’s biggest worldwide hit Seven Seconds, performed as a duet with his backing singer, featured more spectacular guitar work and soulful saxophone with its expectant “we're still waiting” hookline ringing out plaintively. Five minutes later the room was transformed into a Cuban-influenced fiesta and, like all good parties, the show ran and ran with N’Dour and band rocking the house for more than two jubilant hours.

Fiona Shepherd

MUSIC

Sheku Kanneh-Mason & Harry Baker ★★★★

Queen’s Hall

Needless to say, a full crowd packed into the Queen’s Hall in response to the star pull of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. In tandem with versatile classical/jazz pianist Harry Baker, the pair embarked on a chatty journey that straddled stylistic divisions, the central impetus of Bach as inspiration.

In a sense, the first half acted as warm-up. Kanneh-Mason strummed gently, establishing a cool jazz vibe for the duo’s arrangement of Sour Flower, from which flowed folk-inspired gems by Janacek (four Moravian Folksongs and the expansive narrative of Pohádka), smooth takes on Bill Evans, Pat Metheny and Laura Mvula, and a Prelude and Fugue based on the Shostakovich model in which Kanneh-Mason wrote the Prelude (dreamily austere) and Baker the Fugue (breezy and busy).

Bach’s spirit rang more obviously true after the interval. Movements from his solo Cello Suite No 1 formulated a spinal chord, Mason offering nuanced, poetic interpretations as signposts en route. In between, Baker’s arrangement of the same composer’s “Ich ruf zu dir” was fantasy-like in its harmonic explorations, while two toe-tapping movements from Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No2 ignited a fiery Latin dimension. Then it was back to Bach-à-la-Baker, a helter-skelter arrangement of the D flat Prelude and Fugue.

Ken Walton

MUSIC

Ustatshakirt Ensemble ★★★

The Hub

As the Ustatshakirt Ensemble – four nattily hatted men and one fur-capped woman, sounded their sibilant flutes over string drones and the twang of jaw harps, there was a sense of music from a long way off – literally, of course, coming from the landlocked central Asian republic, but also of its historical journey of survival, now enjoying a new lease of life following suppression during the Soviet era.

This engaging quintet proved masterly players of jaw harps, end-blown and transverse flutes, two-stringed fiddles and the komuz, a narrow, fretless lute, collectively producing a distinctive mix of timbres. Their flute playing was frequently haunting, while the two lute-players sparred with each other in feats of dexterity, strumming frenetically and percussively rapping while waving the instruments with Jimi Hendrix-style showmanship.

Their songs, however, proved more difficult in breaking the communications barrier. Some captions, projected sporadically onscreen, explained that many concerned the country’s legendary hero, Manas. Some evoked horsemanship or village celebrations with appropriate energy.

There also seemed, however, much lamentation, particularly towards the end of their set when the singer intoned a seemingly interminable epic which, no matter how animated in his telling, was incomprehensible without more effective explanation.

Jim Gilchrist