Every Friday, The World Africa presents three new musical releases from or inspired by the continent. This week, we’re looking at artists from the big family of Nø Førmat!, who are celebrating their 20th anniversary with an album, a beautiful book and a tour.
Founded in 2004 by Laurent Bizot, the French label has made encounter one of its mantras, while placing emphasis on Africa. One of his first releases was the album Toto Bona Lokua (2004), bringing together Gérald Toto, Richard Bona and Lokua Kanza. Will follow, among others, Set Lunaby Julia Sarr and Patrice Larose (2005); Chamber Music, by Ballaké Sissoko and Vincent Ségal (2009); or even albums by Mamani Keïta (2006), Blick Bassy (2015), Oumou Sangaré (2017) and, more recently, Urban Village (2021) and Msaki & Tubatsi (2023).
Considering “each new record as an irreducible prototype to any musical genre assigned in advance”, Nø Format! focuses on the unexpected and the alchemy between artists in order to bring out original creations which, for the most part, will last over time, far from the standardization at work in a music industry increasingly governed by algorithmic laws of streaming platforms. An approach supported by instantly recognizable graphics and an innovative economic model, through a subscription system allowing you to receive albums as soon as they are released.
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To celebrate this anniversary, the label will release, Friday June 21, the album Nø Format! Remixed (2004-2024), for which he asked “a new guard of artists with electronic inspirations to remix ten emblematic titles” from its catalog. He also published a beautiful book, Nø Format! 2004-2024, in which he invites “his” artists to testify about their history with the label or to tell the story of the process of creating their albums. Finally, in September, a tour will begin during which a creation will be presented on stage “revisiting the past and future of the label”.
For this musical selection, we have chosen to present to you an excerpt from the album to be released, but also two recent pieces by “in-house” artists signed in the meantime to other labels but which are part of the collaborative heritage by Nø Førmat!.
“Youvilé”, from Gérald Toto, Lokua Kanza & Richard Bona (Hagan remix)
In 2004, therefore, one of the first three albums labeled “NØF” brought together the Martinican guitarist Gérald Toto, the Cameroonian bassist Richard Bona and the Congolese singer Lokua Kanza. In the book published by the label, the first remembers: “We spent, I think, five days in the studio together. » And to tell about their first work session, where everyone lets the others listen to what they have prepared: “There was everything in this first contact: the requirement first, that of Lokua and Richard on the musical outfit, a galvanizing challenge as possible. And then pleasure, and therefore a certain form of lightness. »
The “pan-African trio” will reproduce the experience in 2017 with the album Bondeko, always at Nø Førmat!. An opus in which we find in particular the title Youvilé, today revisited in an “afrofusion” way by Hagan, a British electronic music producer who responded to the label’s call for his remix album.
“Ninkoy”, from Ballaké Sissoko & Derek Gripper
This is one of the most notable records in the Nø Førmat discography! : Chamber Music, published in 2009, is the result of a musical conversation recorded over three nights, in Bamako, between the kora of Malian Ballaké Sissoko and the cello of Frenchman Vincent Ségal. “The kora of Ballaké, it soothes more than others, testifies the latter. It puts you in a state of bliss (…). Ballaké makes things sound like a cathedral. »
The Malian today presents a new dialogue, this time with the South African Derek Gripper, known in particular for having transcribed on classical guitar the compositions of another kora master, Toumani Diabaté. Their joint album, simply titled Ballaké Sissoko & Derek Gripper, was published at the beginning of May, not by Nø Førmat! but on the British label Platoon. The two men bring together their twenty-seven strings over the course of seven immersive and contemplative pieces which sublimate the Mandinka tradition.
“Mbenda”, from Blick Bassy & Yamê
Other milestones in the Nø Førmat adventure! : the album Ako, by Blick Bassy, a tribute to American bluesman Skip James published in 2015; and four years later, 1958, inspired by the independence activist Ruben Um Nyobè. While passing through a studio located in the same building as the label, the Cameroonian artist invited Laurent Bizot to “stop by and listen”. He remembers: “From the first seconds, I hear a proposition, a soundscape that we instantly want to explore. »
Madiba, Blick Bassy’s latest record was released in 2023 by the French label InFiné, but we find in this album on the theme of water something of the philosophy of Nø Førmat!. And particularly in its “extended” version, Madiba nor Mbondi, released in mid-May with four new titles, including two dedicated to meetings: one with the Australian RY X and the other with Yamê, a young Franco-Cameroonian artist on the rise.
Find all of the editorial staff’s musical favorites in the YouTube playlist of World Africa.
