Hizbut Jamm - "Hizbut Jamm"

Hizbut Jamm

Raphael Roginski - guitar
Mamadou Ba – vocal, guitar
Noums Dembele - kora
Paweł Szpura – drums, frame drum

album's title : "Hizbut Jamm

Instant Classic (2024)

Review author: Viačeslavas Gliožeris

The tradition of mixing Western improvisational music with Asian/African traditional one is more than half-a-century long with early extremely successful example of Indians Shakti collaborative work with fusion guitar genius John McLaughlin, coming from mid-70s. One among better known and most successful current examples is with no doubt Mali Tuareg's Tinariwen with their “desert blues”.

Hizbut Jamm is a new multi-national quartet (I can comfortably see them as double-duo), containing two Polish and two African artists. African duo consists of Senegalese vocalist and guitarist Mamadou Ba and kora player from Burkina Faso Noums Dembele. Poland is represented by renown guitarist Raphael Rogiński (possibly best known outside of his homeland by his Jewish music project Shofar) and jazz drummer Paweł Szpura (Hera, Wacław Zimpel To Tu Orchestra, etc).

Everyone familiar with above mentioned Tinariwen music will notice that Hizbut Jamm music has a lot of similarities with it. For sure, most important role here plays characteristic repetitive rhythmic constructions and even more kora's sound, plus partially vocals. Still, what perfectly works on better Tinariwen albums not always works same way here. Even if both bands are based not on musicians virtuosity, but more on authentic hypnotising atmosphere and meditative structures, in a case of early, most interesting Tinariwen albums the listener feels strong magic feel, what not always can be found in Hisbut Jamm music.

I can see two possible reasons of this difference. First, Tinariwen mixes sub-Saharan trad music with blues, which being a Western music has extremely strong African roots. And second – Tinariwen members all are of African origin what obviously helps them feel their music much deeper.

Hizbut Jamm contains African kora based music mixed with jamming, what not always works well to my ear. A bit muddy recording sound doesn't help as well. Bigger part of the time one can hear soloing repetitive kora and occasional vocals, with other instruments sounding somewhere on the backstage.

Still it always interesting to listen to new works searching on cross-cultural mix possibilities.