Friday 10 April 2009

Atoumo/Sonoka - Tambours Antillais (Crazed drumming from the French Antilles)


For your listening pleasure we have this weird album from the French Antilles. It's a split album, side 1 by Atoumo and side 2 by Sonoka, not that those names mean anything to me. When I first played this, I was ready to write it off. I thought it wouldn't be worth a second listen. Side one is awash with those eighties synths that try to imitate the sound of a brass section. Then I checked out side two and had the most fantastic surprise:

Furious, frantic and crazed afro-samba thats unlike anything I've heard before, but reminiscent of so much....and on further listens, even Atoumo's synth heavy stuff has a charm all its own.

Tracklist:

01 Mi Atoumo
02 Tambou A
03 Ye Man Atoumo
04 Djik Djak Po
05 Originalite Nou
06 Minm Bet, Minm Pwel

Get it HERE.

6 comments:

icastico said...

Thanks as always.

Anonymous said...

Curious, strange, natural, like home-made, for weddings & fiestas. Thanks a lot. Grand merci. Mil gracias.

spinning in air said...

Hi there,

Many thanks for this! You might want to check out some info. on percussion music from Guadeloupe and Martinique, though... as they have their own rhythms, styles and names for them, like chouval bwa, tambú (aka tambou), bélè (original, folk-style biguine, with drums), gwo ka and more.

I can see why you might want to call this music "afro-samba," but that's pretty specific to Brazil; even more so, to the "Afro-sambas" composed by the late guitarist Baden Powell.

all the best,
Spinning
http://spinninginair.blogspot.com

spinning in air said...

My bad - tambú is actually from Curaçao. (Can't win 'em all, I guess!)

Harmonix said...

Any chance of a re-up of this? Thanks beforehand.

Great blog, by the way.

Mr Tear said...

Hi Harmonix,

I've re-upped the zip and you can get it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?i21glm98k4hhq6f

Hope you like!