Even in the shadow of death, there is the presence of light, for what casts the shadow if not the blazing facticity of the sun, the giver of life? Sonbonbela is the third full-length album from Mamadou Sanou, aka Baba Commandant. Mamadou passed sometime after the release of this record, but in life, he was a veteran of the West African DIY scene, getting his start in Victor Démé’s respected Mandinka funk band. Hailing from Burkina Faso, Mamadou knits together the last 30 years of Burkinabe funk and Mandingue guitar music to give life to an afrobeat sound that is as fresh and soothing as a cold drink of mango juice on a sweltering, cloudless day, while remaining as urgent and arresting as an air-raid siren sounding overhead. Sonbonbela is vibrant, raw and spontaneous, perfectly capturing the vivacious energy of a live performance while clearly honing the benefits of precision offered by studio recording. "Chasser Les Sachets" is a shapeshifting and fluid, guitar-groove ushered gallop, "Afro Mandingo" is an enlivening clatter and heed-snaring tumble through the calming confluence of rhythmic catharsis, while the title-track “Sonbonbela” crashes into your senses like it was airdropped into an afterparty, relying on more traditional funk instrumentation to achieve its groovy gravitas, it manages to be serious in tone but affectively jovial in delivery. Death is but a door, life is only a window, truth is found in the eternal expanse that unites our present with our past and a quickly cohering future. There is no hiding from something that is everywhere—in the air, in the water, and sewn into the fabric of both flesh and memory. You cannot silence a dead man. Rest in power, Mamadou Sanou.
