kagablog

1. Mavis Staples – We’ll Never Turn Back (Anti-)

- a dozen traditional and might as well be traditional songs about equality, civil rights and the blessings of the Lord might seem an unusual choice for album of the year, but this collection of freedom songs, sung with unfailing authority and conviction by one of the great soul and gospel voices of our time, who happened also to have been around and involved when activist singing was at its ‘60s peak, and produced with impressive simplicity and focus by Ry Cooder, ended up winning hands down as it just kept getting stronger and more emotionally involving as its rivals struggled to keep up

2. Robert Wyatt – Comicopera (Domino)

- the combined age of the two artists at the top of this list is around 130, not bad for someone who prides himself on continually seeking out the new and the challenging and never, in the words of the civil rights anthem that gave its name to my No 1, turning back (well, not that often, anyway), but if you think that nostalgia might have played too great a part in the choices you clearly haven’t heard the music – there is, in fact, as so often, a touch of an unspecified, indeterminate past about the sound of Wyatt as he deals expertly and enticingly in gentle persuasion, quietly mordant wit and engaging wistfulness, and dispenses, often with considerable political irony, a general air of calm as he dabbles in his usual array of folk, jazz and amiably avant-artpop and rock forms, yet he always sounds slightly ahead of whatever else is going on – Wyatt’s strength is that he’s not only a dabbler but perhaps even, in cricketing terms, a dibbly-dobbler, too, that quintessential English medium pacer who seems innocuous enough but is damn nearly impossible to get away, and who invariably ends up snaring his prey – “Comicopera”, a significant part of which finds Wyatt reflecting on war, seems likely to stand out for some time even in his singular body of work

3. Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba – Segu Blue (Out/Here) / Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara – Soul Science (Wayward)

- essentially, I suppose, banjo and fiddle music from West Africa, Kouyate’s Malian ngoni and Camara’s Gambian ritti being, respectively, fundamentally and without getting too musicologically anal, ancestors of those favourite folk instruments, and every bit as thrilling as any created in the Appalachians or anywhere else (and arguably more elegant than most) – Kouyate’s group is a ngoni quartet with guest vocals from several highly evocative West Africans, including the celebrated Kassy Made Diabate and Malian bluesman Lobi Traore, while Camara’s collaborator is the long serving guitarist in Robert Plant’s band and the producer of the first album by Tinariwen, for whom see (not much) further down this list – despite the sometimes fanciful notions that surround the pre-slavery West African origins of the blues, it’s hard not to hear them here; where “Segu Blue” might be redolent of the Mississippi Delta, though, “Soul Science” seems to align itself with that state’s hill country’s hambone and drone