Monday, February 14, 2011

Womaddicts to sample ancestral electronica

"An epiphany in Senegal led to the formation of one of the world's more unusual bands.

IN SENEGAL in the 1990s, English musician and record producer Simon Emmerson had an epiphany that led him to form the Afro Celt Sound System.

He was producing albums for singer Baaba Maal. ''I was wide-eyed and innocent, trying to find my way into this music that I know nothing about, '' he recalls, ahead of the band's forthcoming performance at the Womadelaide Festival. ''The music of ancestral West Africa seemed to resonate [with] a very deep strata of the British Isles.

''Hearing and recording this music, I heard melodies and rhythms that were familiar.''

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He tested his feeling by taking recordings back to England and playing them to Irish uilleann piper Davy Spillane."

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