RFI Musique - - Album review

Album review

Didier Awadi

Présidents d’Afrique

Paris

07/07/2010 -

Didier Awadi recently released Présidents d’Afrique in Senegal, a rap album about history that dusts off some of the speeches made by the continent’s major political figures and serves them up to young African people.

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It took four years of research, reading, collecting and interviews before Didier Awadi could put to music some of the speeches made by politicians central to African independence and offer them up for the ears of an African youth in need of a few markers. “Right now, young Africans don’t care about history: their role models are 50 Cent and Lil’Wayne. Why not, but I think it’s simplistic. I want to rebuild the reasons we can be proud to be African,” he explained half way through the project.

In reviving the memory of leaders like the Burkinabe Thomas Sankara, the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Kenyan Jomo Kenyatta, Didier Awadi is reviving a post-independent vision of a strong, united, free Africa. But the artist also looks across the Atlantic Ocean, towards some of the emblematic figures of black consciousness like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Aimé Césaire.

When it comes to the music, Didier Awadi achieves an unexpected feat in infusing each track with the colours of the country in question, inviting artists from all over the continent. Non, which refers to the Sékou Touré’s famous refusal to General de Gaulle in 1958, is rich with balafons and Mandinka guitar. Amandla, which celebrates Nelson Mandela, resonates with a chorus of zulu singers. The singer Babani Koné and the rappers Tata Pound make their voices heard on the track that samples Modibo Keita, the first Malian president. Another militant step in the career of “big brother” Awadi, unifier and pan-African promoter.