Trilok Gurtu speaking about its experiment of "Farakala"

"I think that it was a very single experiment, and in particular the fact of being in interior Africa, in a village where few people, musicians and who more is Indians can go.

I played and lived with people, played on their instruments and they in their turn my Indian melodies sang. The recording proceeded under rather unusual conditions: in a hut lit with the candle. I believe that there are many resemblances between Africa and India: people are happy with the simple minimum and time does not exist, the rate/rhythm exists.

One needs the food for really including/understanding the musicians Malians and playing with them. Oumou Sangare, even as a Malian, said to me that it could not do what I did, coming from India. I played on the African instruments exclusively and I think that it is a rare recording. I hope that the listening of this disc will help more musicians and more media to include/understand the term of "world music". Ca really goes up with the roots. Frederic did good work. And it is completely sincere. "



Recorded in the south of Mali, in the bush of the Farakala village, the new album of Trilok Gurtu is announced like the most unique production of the artist. Completely acoustic, recorded live, the amazing sound of "Farakala" (title of the album) will surprise in his discography. Produced by Frederic Galliano for the Frikyiwa label, it propels Trilok Gurtu in the most subtle and the deepest Indian and African combination ever carried out. Trilok Gurtu pushed the experiment until giving up tablas and drums. While seeking in the compositions and appropriating the rare percussions of south Mali, he succeeds in making emerge in his play and his melodies all his Indian culture tangled with African vibrations. These mixtures, these interpretations, these instinctive and required developments make this album a major production, sensual, merry and released from all stereotyped fusion. No doubt the greatest simplicity of Trilok Gurtu emerges here and this album signs there the talent of an innovative and scholar work. The live will gather the musical team with whom he recorded. There again, one will have to expect the most surprising musical proposal of the artist. After the recordings in Africa, the project tours in Europe with musicians from the label Frikyiwa and who represent the alive African music of today, the inheritance such as it is being transmitted to rising generation. After touring with Hadja Kouyaté, NGou Bagayoko and Filifin, new musicians join now Ali Boulo Santo (kora, voice) one of the main pilars of "Farakala" project, Aissata Baldé (voice), Bachir Sanogo (kamele n’goni, dozon), Phons (guitar). These African musicians of about thirty years try out the duality of the contemporary African music completely, between Africa and Occident, the passage of a traditional generation remained within the country to a younger generation living in exile in contact with mixed sonorities. Trilok, himself has been doing such experiments for a long time and with "Farakala" this precursory virtuoso keeps opening the ways of the meeting between African and Indian music, finally in resonance with a whole generation. He was just a few years ahead...