|
(see below for Irish Times review)
Niwel is currently working with percussionist
Éamonn Cagney. Having
studied Guinean and Irish percussion, Cagney worked intensively
in Ghana with members of the Kake Ensemble and brings an instinctive
understanding of Niwel's musical vision - together they have what
has been described as a "unique meeting of minds".
The duo recorded their first album, Uh!
Eze nzela molayi (Oh! It's a long way) in 2006. Their music
was featured on the Southern Fried 2 compilation album and their
set went down a storm at the launch party in Decmber 2007. They
tour regularly throughout the country.
_____________________________________________________________
Irish Times Review: Mon, Mar
19, 2007
Niwel Tsumbu Duo at The Sugar Club
Niwel Tsumbu trades in good vibrations. His wayward
incantations and surgically precise guitar lines were a breath of
fresh air on the eve of our annual paddywhackery love-in. Congolese-born,
but resident here, Tsumbu radiates energy.
Accompanied by Éamonn Cagney on spinetingling percussion,
he launched headlong into an original repertoire (supplemented by
the occasional playful segue towards Mac The Knife, that conjured
comparisons with Charles Mingus during his glorious Ah-Um period).
Tsumbu's music is two parts jazz-inflection and three parts African
rhythm. His real strength is his abandonment of all notions of western
convention in the architecture of his music, favouring instead a
freewheeling, unruly and circuitous route that eventually brings
him from start to finish. Uh! Eza nzela molayi was a curtain raiser
of immense confidence and panache, which gave Tsumbu free rein to
straddle guitar, percussion and vocals with celebratory ease.
Admittedly, the song afforded Tsumbu the chance to showcase an embarrassment
of musical riches within the first 10 minutes of the evening's performance
- with the foreboding concern that we might have heard all he had
to offer before we (if not he) had even warmed up.
Truth was though, that Niwel Tsumbu and Éamonn Cagney had
a cataclysm of moods and moves to share as the evening wore on.
RIP was hypnotically meditative and surprisingly life-affirming,
and gave Tsumbu the chance to taper his energy levels to a pedestrian
pace, and his childlike delight in his discovery of what he christened
The Lost Scale had us eating out of the palm of his hand: an unapologetically
light-fingered salutation to the bottomless well that is music.
The Irish Landscape meandered, and the marriage of sean nós
and Congolese incantation may take some time to convince, but this
was largely due to the discrepancy in vocal prowess of Tsumbu and
Cagney, rather than an inherent stylistic incompatibility. At its
core though, it offered a neat counterpoint to the Aboriginal concept
of songlines, of singing the landscape into existence, blade of
grass by blade of grass, tree by tree.
Cagney's percussive contributions were calculus-like, melding elastically
with Tsumbu's classically-influenced guitar lines.
Winding down with Unknown Story, a meditation on how nobody has
a monopoly on the truth, the Niwel Tsumbu duo unveiled a cavernous
stash of redemptive music, and promise much more to come.
Siobhán Long © 2007 The Irish Times
|
