https://youtu.be/J8GFPRXsswA

Sun-baked instrumental meditations played on local string and percussion instruments. Yearning vocals and songs that evoke the mystifying realities of everyday life. Recorded live and outdoors on Grande Comore island by acclaimed producer, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Ustad Saami, Zomba Prison Project).

The Comoro islands are known locally as the “islands of the moon.” “We are an island, but we’re not alone” is the first album of original songs ever to be released from the region.

Volume #8 of Glitterbeat’s Hidden Musics series.

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Producer Ian Brennan tells the story of how the album came together:

“It took us six flights to get to the tiny African island, well sequestered in the Indian Ocean and uninhabited by man until centuries after Christ. It is a nation with no army, only police. A place where women don thick mud-masks for sunblock.

Instead of sustenance farming, here there are canoe boat sustenance fishermen. That they haul in lobster for their families to take the edge off of discontent and poverty versus the desperation we have seen elsewhere such as in Malawi where some are forced to resort to eating mice.

There is a trash-filled beach meters past the Presidential Palace, abutting its walls. The island’s tone is so laid-back that we did a three-point turn in his driveway, without incident, and barely detecting notice.

Shortly after arriving, we inquired about the ndzumara (a double-reed pipe, or primitive oboe), and were sadly informed, “He died.” The last living player had just passed, the sound of the instrument ostensibly lost forever with him. We were left to only i.......
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