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F E B R U A RY 2 0 2 2 36 WEEDIE SEVEN
BRAIMAH IN
CONGO SQUARE
BLUES MUSICIANS TO WATCH
IN
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MARC
SAVOY AND THE
ROUGE
T H E M U S I C I SS U E HISTORY OF HIS
ACCORDIONS
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MUSIC PROFILES
Africa is in New Orleans
WEEDIE BRAIMAH TAPS INTO THE AFRICAN SOUND IN NEW ORLEANS WITH HIS DEBUT ALBUM “THE HANDS OF TIME” Story by Alexandra Kennon • Photos by Emily Ferretti
“I
’m an African American. I’m a Black American. I eat grits. So, I connect with Congo hSquare.” Spoken in a sample by the acclaimed African percussionist Nana Kimati Dinizulu, these words introduce the journey of djembefola (or djembe player) Weedie Braimah’s Grammy-nominated debut album The Hands of Time. From the beginning of the record, the drums take the listener from Africa to New Orleans, then project their sounds into the future and the world at large. Dinizulu’s words strike a powerful chord with Braimah, a New Orleans resident who was born in Ghana, but has extensive roots in the Crescent City on his mother’s side of the family. “I had to find a way to connect this music to one of most African-centered places within the Americas,” Braimah explained. “You’re dealing with certain musics, certain rhythms, and certain instrumentations coming from Africa, that [are] in America. But one of the places that you know for a fact that is still alive, that you can see this culture still cooking and staying strong, is in New Orleans. You can hear it in Congo Square.” As the rhythms on the opening track “Full Circle” increase in intensity and volume, creating a voyeur of the listener as they’re pulled into Braimah’s world, three speaking voices emerge to provide a cultural roadmap setting the record’s tone. In addition to Dinizulu’s, there is a sample from Michael Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian percussionist whose 1960 album Drums of Passion is widely-regarded as the first recording to popularize African music in the West. “Frances Beybey,” Olatunji says, “a noted African musicologist, said about the drum, ‘it’s an instrument that expresses our inner feelings…’” Then, after Dinizulu brings the narrative to Congo Square, spotlighting the inextricable intersections between
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