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Politics & Community Review

Artist: Positive Black Soul
Title: Salaam

Year 1996
Label: Mango Records
Review by: Ethan Zuckerman

Tripod Rating (out of four): 3
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Positive Black Soul: Salaam

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the big picture

I was listening to NPR's Afropop Worldwide on my car radio when I heard "Def Lo Xam," the first single off PBS's first US release. I had to pull over. Forget about Afropop -- welcome to the wide world of AfroRap.

Doug-E-Tee and Awadi are straight off the streets... of Dakar, Senegal, West Africa. If they weren't rapping in Fulani and French, you might think this was the latest hot crew from Death Row Records. I had to read the liner notes twice to convince myself that Dre hadn't laid down the freaky organ lines that snake through the chorus of "Def Lo Xam" (Fulani for "Do what you've got to do"). And there are moments where the interplay between the basso growl of Awadi and the tenor of Doug-E-Tee sounds suspiciously like the back and forth of Chuck D and Flavor Flav.

But it's deeper than that. There's something about a Senegalese rapper declaring, "I got so much love for my niggers that it really hurts me every time I see them always pulling tha' triggers" that forces you to accept that the music world is becoming truly multinational. The tracks cut in LA today get broadcast in NYC tomorrow, in Dakar next week, and find themselves incorporated into albums made by West Africans in Paris. As the circle starts to close, perhaps American producers will keep their ears on the streets of Dakar, Abidjan, Accra and Lagos in the hopes of finding the Muslim equivalent of the Fugees. Keep your ears open for the sounds from a new set of "motherland MCs"-- and pick up PBS's Salaam to warm you up in the meantime.

clips

Check out
"Def Lo Xam" and "Le Bourreau Est Noir" .

smarts

Listen to the strongest tracks on the disc and you'll hear kora and djembe competing for aural space with fairly pedestrian drums-n-bass. Take a look at the liner notes and you'll find tributes to Thomas Sankara (former president of Burkina Faso, brutally murdered in a coup), meditations on the lingering effects of colonialism, and pointed questions about the differences between the identities of "black" and "african." Look at the weaker parts of the album at you'll hear some strange attempts at crafting tracks for a crossover to American radio.


what do you say?

Have you heard this album? How many wrenches would you give it? (The more wrenches, the better a "tool for thought" it is.)

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Tripod members give this album 2.0 wrenches so far.

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