Dobet Gnahoré

Take the energy of Lauryn Hill, the consciousness of India.Arie and the mystique of Erykah Badu and you got Dobet Gnahore'. This dancing and drumming songbird hails from the homeland, Ivory Coast, West Africa, and is currently on a North American and Canadian tour.

Gnahore' stops in St. Louis at the Touhill Performing Arts Center to pull the curtains on the UMSL’s International Performing Arts Series.

The concert begins at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, May 6, in the Touhill’s E. Desmond and Lary Ann Lee Theatre on the campus.

“It’s a great way to bring performers to St. Louis who probably would not be here otherwise, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring the world to UMSL and the community,” said Bob Ell, coordinator, programs and special events at the Center for International Studies at UMSL.

Gnahore's brand of Afro-pop music has earned her rave reviews as she blesses cities with her unique, powerful and uplifting performance.

The Chicago Tribune said if there is any justice in the world, Gnahore', a singer, dancer and percussionist, is going to be very famous.

“If Gnahore' had done nothing more than wrap that voluptuous, supple, nimble, octaves-leaping voice of hers around her listeners’ ears, she would have earned cheers and standing ovations that greeted her work, but she also moved like a dream, expressing the undulating rhythms and buoyant melody line of her pan-African source material with extraordinary physical grace and poetry,” The Tribune wrote.

“Add to that the startling emotional range of her music – which spans plaintive laments to ebullient dance pieces – and you have a performer who is practically a theatre piece unto her self,” The Tribune continued.

Gnahore's tour supports her sophomore album Na Afrika, a follow up to her 2004 debut CD,Ano Neko.

Gnahore' describes her new CD as personal vision of Africa today. It’s performed in a number of different African languages, addressing social and political issues: the struggles of women in African society, the exploitation of children, the impact of greed and violence on family.

Her biographer writes that she calls upon Africa to seek solutions from within and draw upon its own vast resources to create a better future. She sings of love and loss, as well as joy and celebration, using a wide variety of rhythms and styles that reflect her unique pan-African approach.

Gnahore' added to her bio in 2006 when she earned a Newcomer of the Year nomination from the BBC World Music Awards.

While Gnahore' sings in seven languages, one doesn’t have to know the lyrics coming from her mouth to be moved and even captivated by one of Africa’s latest gems.

Her music is soothing yet empowering and commands sort of a ritual-like engagement.

The Los Angeles Weekly summed her music up like this: “If sweetness and light is all you seek in your pan-African musical dish, don’t bother sound-checking Dobet Gnahore' or her new CD.”

The weekly, which called her a warrior-princess, continued, “But if you crave emotional breath and unfettered soul, fierceness leavened with tenderness, angry sociopolitical rants balanced with gentle heartstring pulls, then sup from Gnahore's potent sonic stew.”

Tickets are $15 for general admission and $7 for students. More information is available at (314) 516-4949 - By Bill Beene Of The St. Louis American

September 17, 2007
Perhaps a performer who's more charismatic, versatile, dynamic and inventive than Dobet Gnahore will emerge during the ongoing World Music Festival -- but I doubt it. The show that Gnahore played during the opening night of the festival drew ecstatic responses from a sold-out house at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Friday night, and for good reason.

If Gnahore, who's from the Ivory Coast, had done nothing more than wrap that voluptuous, supple, nimble, octaves-leaping voice of hers around her listeners' ears, she would have earned the cheers and standing ovations that greeted her work. But she also moved like a dream, expressing the undulating rhythms and buoyant melody lines of her pan-African source material with extraordinary physical grace and poetry.

Add to that the startling emotional range of her music -- which spans plaintive laments to ebullient dance pieces -- and you have a performer who is practically a theater piece unto herself.

The seemingly disembodied voice that opened the set, as Gnahore sang offstage, barely hinted at the experience yet to come. But as Gnahore's beguiling vocals floated through the house, her melismatic phrases and amber tone quickly seducing the ear, listener curiosity had to be piqued.

Soon she took the stage, slowly building the intensity and fervor of her show. By the time this evening had reached the first of several dramatic peaks -- with Gnahore singing, swaying, chanting, dancing -- an intimate auditorium on North Lincoln Avenue had become a window to African cultures past, present and future. Singing in various African languages, combining ancient tribal dance rituals with 21st Century moves, imploring her audience to sing along with her in chants of daunting complexity, Gnahore seemed to bring the voice of a continent to those lucky enough to have heard her.

If there's any justice in this world, she's going to be very, very famous.

The Zimbabwe singer-guitarist Louis Mhlanga opened the evening, the quiet humanity of his vocals dovetailing neatly with the insouciant spirit of his instrumentals. Even so, he was fortunate to open the show, rather than close it, because it cannot be easy for anyone to follow Gnahore.

On Saturday night, the geographical focus of the World Music Festival shifted to Eastern Europe, with two bands offering 21st Century viewpoints on gypsy music, to varying degrees of success.

Surely most listeners attending the sold-out show at the Old Town School would have concurred that the standout artist was Macedonian clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, performing with the New York Gypsy All-Stars. The phenomenal speed, technical brilliance and musical fluidity of Lumanovski's playing rendered him virtually a Paganini of the gypsy clarinet.

The evening's other originally scheduled headliner, Romano Drom, had to cancel, because of security-clearance issues, "courtesy of the Department of Homeland Security," Old Town School executive director James Bau Graves told the crowd.

If their replacements, New York-based nouveau-gypsy band Romashka, didn't match the technical level of Lumanovski and colleagues, Romashka earned points for high spirits -- and for rushing in to fill the suddenly empty slot. - By Howard Reich - Chicago Tribune Arts Critic

April 4th, 2008

There are some voices that only need a couple of minutes to put the public under their spell. Dobet Gnahoré has one of those voices. With her clear contralto, she can murmur with tenderness and sensitivity in a deep register or pass painlessly from whispering to more intermediate registers. The volume and without doubt years of training preserve her velvet voice from all harshness of timbre, even when she launches into energetic musical phrasing. Dobet Gnahoré can even evoke the harmonic yodelling of Central African pygmies (made famous by Zap Mama), even if she only uses it for effect or as a kind of game with the audience.
This young 21-year-old woman’s songs are easily accessible to listeners but do not necessarily try to conform to western listening habits. Quite simply structured, they concentrate on well-constructed melodic lines and restrained accompaniments. Soft acoustic guitar picking nearly always sets the tone in the foreground while, in the background, rattles, cymbals and low-pitched beats subtly set the rhythm.

The kalimba or the balafon are rarely used in direct relation with archaic traditions, which results in reinforcing the originality of the pieces. Although she does without keyboards and other electrical instruments, Dobet Gnahoré’s music sounds urban and timeless. Urban pop, sung in local dialect, following in the footsteps of the cosmopolitan African singer and songwriter Habib Koite.

In the Ivory Coast, which was once one of the most stable West African nations, life has now become dangerous. At the beginning of the conflict, Gnahoré’s sound engineer fell victim to a sniper in Abidjan. At that time, six songs on the “Ano Neko” album had been recorded. A little later, Gnahoré and her French husband, guitarist and co-composer Colin Laroche de Féline, moved to Marseilles. They produced the rest of the album – which has not yet been distributed in Germany -, in Belgium under the partial supervision of her father, percussionist Boni Gnahoré. There is little doubt that he had long influenced his daughter. Dobet Gnahoré was acting at 12 years of age, which explains her presence and ease on any stage today. In addition to her voice, she also masters many percussion instruments and skilfully adjusts the dynamics of a concert to them. Sometimes she sits, all alone, with an earthenware vase at the edge of the stage, beating a minimalist beat and concentrating all her intensity on a soothing, but nonetheless seemingly wary, song. At other particularly stirring moments, the young woman wins over the public with her highly expressive dancing.

Despite all, the concert revealed a meticulous dramatic art, which left no room for real improvisation. That did not take away from Gnohoré’s expressiveness or generosity on stage but, beside her, the musicians were slightly overshadowed. Percussionist Laurent Rigaud occasionally came out of the shadows on the balafon, but there was no spontaneous dialogue with Gnahoré’s calebasse. At the end of the day, Dobet Gnahoré’s talent and natural charm alone were sufficient to bring euphoria to the Brotfabrik, which was full to overflowing.”
- By Norbert Krampf, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung