Sigil

http://www.nurukane.com/Nuru Kane is a Senegalese ex-pat multi-instrumentalist/singer now living in Paris. Kane, already making a name for himself in Europe and Africa, offers up Sigil as his first album for worldwide release. Kane is a devotee of gnawa—a type of Moroccan trance music reputed to have strong healing and even exorcizing powers—and is a master of the guimbri, a type of three-stringed acoustic bass central to gnawa. His band, Bayefall Gnawa, is becoming increasingly popular in Paris’ nightclub scene. Bayefall Gnawa members Thierry Fournel (on guitar, oud, the kalimba-like sanza and vocals) and Djeli Makan Sissoko (on n’goni, a type of Malian lute) back up Kane on the seductive Sigil, along with five other, mostly percussion, players. Martin Swan’s plaintive violin on “Talibe”—a beautiful song about a group of people “forc[ed] … onto the streets of Dakar to beg”—adds one of a number of interesting, and just-right, Western touches to this exotic disc.