ORLANDO JULIUS 
& THE AFRO SOUNDZ 

with Underground System

Friday, September 25, 2015, 7:30 p.m.

KASSÉ MADY DIABATÉ 
featuring BALLAKÉ SISSOKO

Thursday, October 1, 2015, 7:00 p.m.

Orlando Julius

Few artists have been more crucial to the invention, development, and popularization of Afro-pop than Orlando Julius. Starting in the '60s, Julius was fusing traditional African sounds and rhythms with those of American pop, soul, and R&B. Aside from performing and recording in his native Nigeria, he spent many years in the United States working on collaborations with Lamont Dozier, the Crusaders, and Hugh Masekela. His 1966 effort, Super Afro Soul, made him a national celebrity in Nigeria and even went so far as to influence music in the United States. The record's dramatic, highly melodic incorporation of soul, pop, and funk was very much ahead of its time, and some say that Super Afro Soul helped shape the funk movement that swept over the United States in subsequent years. After Super Afro Soul, Julius released a long list of records exclusively in Nigeria and from them received a great amount of local fame. He went largely unnoticed by the international community until 2000, when Super Afro Soul was re-released on Strut and distributed throughout the world to wide critical acclaim. In 2011, his 1972 album Orlando Julius and the Afro Sounders was reissued by Voodoo Funk, and the artist increased his live activity at home and abroad. In early 2014, the Heliocentrics brought him to their all-analog studio in North London, where they backed him in a series of recordings that featured vintage tunes that had never been recorded as well as new compositions. 

Kassé Mady Diabaté

Kassé Mady Diabaté was born in 1949 in the village Kéla. His aunt was the great griotte Siramori Diabaté, while his grandfather was known as â€˜Jeli Fama’, which means ‘The Great Griot’, thanks to the gripping quality of his voice. When Kassé Mady was 7 years old, the elders of the family, including Siramori, realized that he had inherited his grandfather’s vocal genius. He would go on to play a role in the most innovative moments in Malian music over the next five decades, first in his own country and later with landmark international collaborations. In 1970 he became lead singer of the Orchestre Régional Super Mandé de Kangaba. Kassé Mady’s remarkable singing won the group the national Biennale music competition in the Malian capital Bamako. In 1988 Kassé Mady left Mali and the Badema National behind and moved to Paris, where he recorded his first solo album for the Senegalese record producer Ibrahima Sylla. He spent the next ten years in Paris, recording Fode, then Kéla Tradition, an acoustic album of Kéla jeli songs. Moving back to Mali in the late 1990s, several collaborations followed, many of which have become landmark recordings: Songhai 2, the album he made with the flamenco group Ketama and Toumani Diabaté, and Koulandjan, on which he collaborated with Taj Mahal and Toumani Diabaté, an album which was famously cited by Barack Obama as one of his favorite albums of all time. Collaborations with Toumani Diabaté continued and he starred in Toumani’s Symmetric Orchestra and Afrocubism projects, both recorded by World Circuit. Solo projects over the past decade have included the acoustic album Kassi Kassé, produced in 2002, and Manden Djeli Kan, released in 2009 and garnering 4 and 5 star reviews.

Final concert in the
MASTERS OF AFRICAN MUSIC series: 

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