(Male Vocal, Soul, World Fusion, Ethnic Jazz, World Connection) Blick Bassy (feat. Richard Bona, Regis Gizavo, Lenine) - Hongo Calling - 2011, FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

Blick Bassy formed his first band, The Jazz Crew, whose repertory already reflected his penchant for bossa nova when he was 17. In 1996, at the age of 22, he took part in the creation of Macase, one of the most inventive of the numerous “jazz fusion” groups, inspired by local rhythms, which proliferated in the clubs in Cameroon. This group collected well-known African prizes (Prix Dйcouvertes RFI, Masa, Kora, etc.)


His debut album 'Leman' was released in 2009 by World Connection Label. After the release he performed in festivals and venues all over the world including Japan, Brasil and USA.
Blick is “a man of the world” in the best sense of the word: rooted in his land but also a traveller in his soul, open to all cultures. His second opus, “Hongo Calling,” reflects him perfectly. Conceived as a passionate musical travelogue, he follows the tragic “slave route” from Cameroon to Brazil, passing through Benin, Senegal and Cape Verde. In the course of his musical travels, he uncovers the missing link between the two continents that once were one.

More than a simple “concept album,” the singular object that you have in your hands is a veritable musical road movie, with this young singer-guitarist from Cameroon who is screenwriter, main actor and director all in one. 


Blick Bassy takes us on a real, live adventure, from Central Africa -- via Benin, Senegal and Cape Verde -- to Brazil. He invites us to travel with him through very different landscapes of sound, eyes shut, as if in the trance induced by “idingo” ceremonies, the ancestral ritual of his Bassa people. So, we follow, through space and time, the different variations of “hongo,” traditional music related to the “assiko” that marks the rhythms of village life, through good times and bad. From one track to another, we meet some flamboyant musicians ... but from the first to the last note, all we really hear is “some Blick Bassy”...


Picasso was right when he cruelly said: ”Artists?.There are two kinds: those who search and those who find.”

Blick Bassy is one of those who find, one who discovered early on that the most intimate secret of art is humanity. Everything is intimately human in his music, without the slightest concern for passing fashion.
“Hongo Calling” is only the second personal CD from Blick Bassy in 20 years of a rich musical life. The rarity of the event reflects his perfectionism, as well as a very particular sense of the rhythm of life. In “Sabada” (track 11), borne along on the melodic sound waves of Regis Gizavo, the great accordionist from Madagascar, Blick Bassy celebrates “patience, that ancestral virtue, too often neglected today: the ability to wait, to move forward calmly and carefully.”


Blick is “a man of the world” in the best sense of the word: rooted in his land but also a traveller in his soul, open to all cultures. His second opus, “Hongo Calling,” reflects him perfectly. Conceived as a passionate musical travelogue, he follows the tragic “slave route” from Cameroon to Brazil, passing through Benin, Senegal and Cape Verde. In the course of his musical travels, he uncovers the missing link between the two continents that once were one.
The high-pitched, hyper-sensual voice of Blick is, in itself, a flying bridge, aerial and solid, that connects the musical landscapes that he traverses. With its very natural falsetto, his voice is, by turns, reminiscent of Congolese rumba singers, Malinké and Wolof storytellers, gospel singers or Brazilian Tropicálistas like Joao Bosco or Djavan whom Blick adores.


Like the latter, Blick is a master of the highly subtle art of singer-guitarists. He has an ingenious way of navigating rhythmically between the strings and the body of his tambour-guitar, making his voice dance,
chat and palaver with his fingers. Blick’s first opus, “Léman” was justifiably considered one of the most convincing musical encounters between Central Africa and the Mandingo people of West Africa. “Hongo Calling” elaborates this beautiful story that brings together lovers of the music of the two great communities of the African diaspora.


Yet, “Hongo Calling” goes much farther “Léman,” pushing Blick’s acoustic horizon well beyond African shores, as far as Rio de Janeiro where much of this disk was recorded. That’s where we meet some of the greatest creators of contemporary Brazilian music: the sumptuous bassist Arthur Maïa, the flamboyant singer-guitarist Lenine and his long-time partner Marco Suzano who contributes most of the percussion. The record opens, moreover, with the hissing sound of the “cuica,” the friction drum of the Bantus, which has become the musical emblem of Brazil. This first piece, “Liké,” underlines the relationship between the famous Brazilian samba and Cameroon’s “assiko,” which is equally lively, but, unfortunately, less known abroad than “bikutsi” or “makossa.”
Very much in evidence on this CD, “assiko” has long been popular all over southern Cameroon, but its origins are claimed by the Bassa people to whom, thanks to his father, Blick Bassy belongs. The perennial cliché holds that Cameroon is “Africa in miniature,” and, to some extent, this is true. There are some 260 different languages spoken in Cameroon by just as many groups of people, each with a variety of musical genres. Originally healing music, destined to put patients into a trance -- as in voodoo -- “assiko” has evolved since Christianity and Islam have supplanted ancestral animism. Far from disappearing, “assiko” has become the most spectacular music for dancing. “Hongo,” which gives this album its title, is music for daily rejoicing in the villages of the Bassa.


Blick is deeply attached to the Bassa language, which is very rich in imagery, proverbs and untranslatable double meanings. All the songs on the album are sung in Bassa, with, in “Je te yamo”, some phrases in the local patois, camfranglais. Like all Bantu languages, Bassa is a tonal language. Each syllable can have up to five meanings depending on the tone in which it is pronounced. The meaning of the melody, as well as the rhythm, is inherent to the Bassa culture, which Blick Bassy fervently defends. The fascinating way that he sings is, therefore, closely linked to his language: ardent and breathless, melodic and passionate, fluid but constantly punctuated with pauses for breath, with syncopation.


There are about one million Bassa people. Their mythology claims that they are descended from the Nubians of Pharaonic times, scattered through the centuries by war and migration over this central and south-western region of Cameroon where musical diversity remains really prodigious despite the rapid inroads of urbanisation. The Bassa played a key role in the fight for independence and paid a heavy price under colonial repression. Blick Bassy feels profoundly Bassa, even if some his ancestors were Ewondo, the people who named Yaoundé, the splendid capital, the city of seven hills, the Rome of Africa, where Blick Bassy grew up. His father was even a governor, so Blick’s destiny seemed laid out for him: he could have become a high-level civil servant...

Fortunately for music lovers, Blick was an undisciplined child. To subdue him, his father decided to send him to his grandparents in Mintaba, an isolated little village halfway between Yaoundé (the political capital) and Douala (the economic capital of Cameroon). Blick was ten years old. He who had grown up in the comfort of the high African bourgeoisie found himself, from one day to the next, living with his brothers in the middle of the forest, without running water, electricity or recorded music. No more listening to his parents’ favourite records -- jazz, soul, Nat King Cole, Brazilian songs. Moreover, he didn’t have time. He lived like any other African schoolboy:: hours of walking between school and home, and, then, forcible reflection on the global economy, because instead of eating automatically after learning, the problem became how to learn and find food to eat. At the age of ten, Blick could do his homework only during daylight hours and then he had to work to feed himself: hunting, gathering, cultivating, fishing... He also learned music, thanks to an uncle who didn’t really encourage him but who left his guitar lying around and thanks, most of all, to an “assiko” singing guitar player, an itinerant musician who passed through Mintaba once a month to put on a show that became the village’s sole cultural event.
Back in Yaoundé, it didn’t take Blick long to decide that he preferred the life of a wandering musician to that of a bureaucrat. At 17, he formed his first band, The Jazz Crew, whose repertory already reflected his penchant for bossa nova.In 1996, at the age of 22, he took part in the creation of Macase, one of the most inventive of the numerous “jazz fusion” groups, inspired by local rhythms, which proliferated in the clubs in Cameroon. This group collected well-known African prizes (Prix Découvertes RFI, Masa, Kora, etc.)


There are the inevitable comparisons of Blick Bassy with some of his compatriots: Manu Djibango (with whom Blick often played, Guy N’Sangue (the marvellous bassist who provides support throughout this album) or Richard Bona, who functions as guitarist, percussionist and co-arranger on “Likanda” ... each, in their own way, has enriched world music by integrating a formidable portion of the musical heritage of Cameroon. But Blick is the one who, without a doubt, will live in posterity for having internationalised the unknown musical repertory of the Bassa, as Francis Bebey or Manu Djibango have done for the Doula, neighbours of the Bassa. Blick Bassy also is the first to have delivered such a limpid link between the music of ancestral Africa and that of Brazil, a first stop on his musical journey along the painful road to slavery.

Blick BASSY - Voix, Guitare, Percussion
Marco SUZANO - Percussion
Guy NWOGANG - Percussion, Calebasse
Leonardo AMUEDO - Guitare
Guimba KOUYATÉ - Guitare, Ngoni
Rodrigo CAMPELLO - Cavaquinho
Márcio HULK - Cavaquinho
Guy NSANGUE - Basse
Marcelo MARTINS - Flûte
Samaké HAROUNA - Kamele N'goni
Mamadou KONÉ DIT PRINCE - Calebasse
Yacouba CISSOKO - Tama
Jean-Louis SOLANS - Guitare
GUESTS:
LENINE - Voix (6, 12)
Richard BONA - Guitare, Percussion (3)
Arthur MAIA - Basse (6)
Alune WADE - Basse (7)
Fafa RUFFINO - Voix (5, 6)
Régis GIZAVO - Accordéon (11)