RFI Musique - - Album review

Album review

Kareyce Fotso

Kwegne

Paris

02/06/2010 -

In stepping out onto the international scene using her own name, Cameroon singer Kareyce Fotso has chosen to lay herself bare, simply accompanied by her guitar and percussions, on an album entitled Kwegne.

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As you listen to the album, you may feel tempted to take a look at the CD box to make sure there has been no mistake. This young woman’s voice doesn’t match her age, and it’s disconcerting. At times, it seems that one of her ancestors must have paid her a visit as she sang into the microphone.

The song fills the space, possesses it, grabbing hold of your attention with tacit consent. A temptation that it would be a shame to resist. The timeless, black and white photo on the booklet draws us in beside the singer as she bathes her daughter. She must be singing her a lullaby.

This finalist of the 2009 RFI Découvertes award and silver medal winner of the Jeux de la Francophonie a few months earlier, has found the key to open wide the doors to her own particular world.

The skilfully played percussions and the guitar on which she strums two or three chords are only accessories to her singing. Her song is never a sterile performance, it comes out naturally with mournful accents no doubt inherited from the traditional weeping of her mother.

It was on advice from musician and set designer François Kolelaere, along with encouragement from her celebrated compatriot, Richard Bona and positive reactions to her solo concerts, that convinced Kareyce to make an album in the image of the show that transformed her.

Traces of this identity were already present on her very first album Mulato, which was only released in her homeland. They are particularly strong on the track So’a, of which a new version can be found on this album, and Maloye, of which she has retained only the acoustics.

In the studio in Brussels, some of these songs were recorded in a single session to keep the spontaneity that can be heard throughout Kwegne. This dense album brings the promise of even greater things.