Burkina Electric at CSPS

BURKINA ELECTRIC
Iowa debut | Burkina Electric is the first electronica band from Burkina Faso, a country and culture located in the deep interior of West Africa. Band members Maï Lingani, Wende K. Blass, Pyrolator, and Lukas Ligeti first became friends and collaborators as members of Beta Foly, a group that emerged from a workshop led by Lukas and Pyrolator in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. According to Der Standard, Beta Foly was “A fusion of African tradition and experimental electronics, the pioneering position of which will probably not be fully understood until several years from now.” Indeed, the music of Burkina Electric is remarkably forward looking. Whereas much electronic dance music, even in Africa, still seems to employ the same rock and funk rhythms that have characterized Western pop for the past 50 years, Burkina Electric seeks to enrich the fabric of the music by using different rhythms: rarely heard but equally danceable. Many of the songs are built upon ancient tempos of the Sahel, such as the Mossi peoples' Waraba and Ouennenga, little-known even in Africa. According to co-founder Lukas Ligeti, “Africa is not a museum, and tradition only makes sense if it continues to live and is capable of fulfilling its social function in today’s life.”
Burkina Electric, both experimental and entertaining, creates all its music collaboratively, typically putting four musicians and two dancers onstage. Award-winning singer Maï Lingani, a genuine star in Burkina Faso thanks to her unique voice and charismatic stage presence, sings in Moré, Dioula, Bissa and French. Wende Blass, one of Burkina's premier guitarists, contributes soulful melodies. Electronicist VJ Pyrolator is known as one of Germany's most inventive pop musicians and is a top producer associated with the Neue Deutsche Welle, D.A.F. and Der Plan, while New York-based drummer Lukas Ligeti is an up-and-coming composer who's received commissions from groups such as the Kronos Quartet and Bang on a Can All-Stars.
Together they're spinning out new rhythms while influenced by old grooves, allowing the traditions and rhythms of Burkina Faso in particular, and Africa in general, to meet and mingle with contemporary dance culture, blazing new trails in electronic world music.
Sat Apr 5 | 8 pm
CSPS | 1103 Third St SE | Cedar Rapids
$13 advance | $16 day of show

Related events | Burkina Electric is getting a lot of national radio play this month. The band's co-founder Lukas Legeti was featured on WITF's Composing Thoughts in Pennsylvania, and on WNYC's Evening Music in New York City. The group is also highlighted on the syndicated program "Africa in America 2008" from Afropop Worldwide.

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