RFI Musique - - Album review - Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara

Album review

Justin Adams & Juldeh Camara

Tell No Lies

Paris

17/08/2009 -

Two years ago, British guitarist and producer Justin Adams teamed up with the Gambian ‘griot’ Juldeh Camara, melding rock guitar and traditional African influences on their first joint album Soul Science (2007). Now, the daring duo is back in their news with Tell No Lies, an opus every bit as confident and exhilarating as their debut.

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Tell no lies, Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara's second album

Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara share an intuitive feel for fusion and they believe in exchanging riffs and melody lines in a free-flowing kind of way. Interestingly enough, both musicians’ lives have evolved along similar lines. Adams, who was born in London in 1961, is the son of a diplomat and spent his youth travelling in Africa and the Middle East. Camara, who moved to England in 2003, spent much of his early life on the road in Gambia, accompanying his ‘griot’ father from place to place.

While Adams honed his guitar skills playing with Jah Wobble and, more recently, accompanying Robert Plant (former lead singer of legendary British rock band Led Zeppelin) live on stage, Camara mastered the riti (the Gambian one-string spike fiddle) and the kologo (a two-stringed banjo), coaxing the subtlest of sounds from these traditional instruments.

On Tell No Lies, Adams’ gritty blues-rock melds seamlessly with Camara’s West African strings, weaving a trance-like effect on the listener. The pair’s majestic second album was principally recorded in the Real World studios owned by Peter Gabriel (another rock star who converted to African sounds.)

Defying time-worn clichés of cross-over, the British rocker and the African ‘griot’ cook up their own fluid musical mix. As Adams channels Led Zeppelin, The Clash and Muddy Waters, Camara calls on young Africans to remember their cultural heritage. Following the griot’s charge to tell the truth, he also speaks out loud and clear on topics such as immigration and sings of the irresistible pull of friendship, the fatal nature of love and the disarray of the dreamer.