Album of the Week: L'Africain

Here's a poll for you. Or rather, a dozen polls, each of them asking you to choose between six different albums. I am in the process of shaping our plans for the blog during the Summer of 2025, and part of it is that I plan to have every Record Club album for the entire summer planned in advance. The winners of these polls will be kept in my back pocket and released when the time comes to start talking up those summer plans. Thank you kindly for voting.

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WEEK 319 — March 9-15, 2025

L'Africain

by Tiken Jah Fakoly

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

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PICKED BY ZACH

ZACH'S COMMENTS: "A friend of mine runs a Substack that I really like. He recommends a different song every month. The February song was from Tiken Jah Fakoly, and I couldn't stop listening to it. It was from a live album, though. Somewhere along the way of googling him, L'Africain came up as one of his that rated pretty high internationally. So, without really knowing his music other than that one song my friend recommended (it's the live version of "Plus rien ne m'étonne," for those interested), I dove in and picked this album. I'm on an adventure with it as much as the rest of you."

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ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: Reggae, pop reggae

RELEASED: September 17, 2007

LENGTH: 47:19

TRACKLIST:

1. L'africain
2. Ouvrez les frontières
3. Où aller où?
4. Africain à Paris
5. Ayebada
6. Soldier
7. Non à l'excision
8. Foly
9. Viens voir
10. Promesses bla bla
11. Gauches droite
12. Ma côte d'Ivoire

LYRICS: Genius.com, and hopefully your browser can translate the lyrics like mine did

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ARTIST DETAILS

PRONOUNS: he/him/his

ABOUT: Doumbia Moussa Fakoly was born June 23, 1968, in Odienné, Kabadougou, Côte d'Ivoire. Fakoly got into reggae at a young age, starting his first group as a teenager. He gained national recognition with his music that took on a political nature, including an early song about the death of Ivorian leader Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993. Fakoly has stated that he plays music "to wake up the consciences." His work largely speaks to the injustices inflicted on the people of Africa. He has lived in exile in Mali since 2003, after receiving death threats for his music's lyrical content. Fakoly is a practicing Muslim, though has stated that he has a deep respect for the Rastafari culture.

DISCOGRAPHY: Wikipedia has seventeen albums listed, but does not indicate which are studio albums or live albums or compilations or EPs. For example, we can assume that Live in Paris is a live album and not a studio follow-up to L'Africain. Fakoly's latest release was last year's Acoustic. 

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ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: a 2016 interview on Afropop Worldwide

WATCHING SOME SHIT: this appears to be a video of the aforementioned Live in Paris concert

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: It's been almost six years since we've covered a straight-up reggae album. Not since I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash. It's been so long that Johnny Nash passed away in the time it took us to cover another reggae album. But here we are. There were other albums that had reggae elements, of course—the Afro-jazz of 340ml's Sorry for the Delay, the toasting Deejay of U-Roy's Version Galore, the unfortunate genre-plundering rich-kid algorithm-inspired pop of Surfaces' Horizons—but nothing as pure reggae as these two albums.

At a certain point, we'll have covered so many artists from Africa that it won't even be worth mentioning in this section. But for now—and since Fakoly makes a point to express his pride in his home continent (plus, the title of the album is literally The African)—here are the previous RC artists from Africa, in the order that we've covered their albums: Wells Fargo, 340ml, Amadou Balaké, Burna Boy, K'naan, Nakhane, and Blaqbonez. L'Africain was released on Wrasse Records. K'naan is on the same label. So was Gal Costa when she was alive.

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Wrasse Records also released music from Fela Kuti (featured as a Song of the Week in a different American era), Miriam Makeba (just featured in A Year of Blind Spots), and Seu Jorge (a main player in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou). No direct mentions of Tiken Jah Fakoly on the blog as of yet, though.

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OTHER ALBUMS TO CHECK OUT

LAST WEEK'S ALBUM: Red Headed Stranger by Willie Nelson, and make sure to check out the reviews if you wanna see what we thought of it!

RC@5: We're relistening to the Record Club album we featured exactly five years ago this week. The RC album for this week in 2020 was Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs.

SHADOW RECORD CLUB: Each week, I'm exploring a genre of last week's album by listening to one of that genre's top-rated albums. Last week's Red Headed Stranger was an Old-Time album. We're listening this week to The Devil Makes Three by the Devil Makes Three.

NEXT WEEK'S RC ALBUM: In case you need some extra time with an album to write a review for it, you can get a head start on Full Collapse by Thursday!

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Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!