Bokanté

Bokanté is a music group task founded by Snarky Puppy’s Michael Little league. He explains the audio of multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-generational Bokanté like a “weird mix of Western African music, Delta blues, and Led Zeppelin and Caribbean kaladja (with lyrics in Creole and French).” The eight-piece ensemble contains Little league on baritone acoustic guitar and bass; lap and pedal metal guitarist Roosevelt Collier (Lee Males, Karl Denson); Snarky Puppy guitarists Chris McQueen and Bob Lanzetti; percussionists Jamey Haddad (Paul Simon, Sting); André Ferrari (Väsen), and Keita Ogawa (Banda Magda, Yo-Yo Ma); all fronted by veteran tri-lingual vocalist Malika Tirolien who prospects her own good quintet and made an appearance on Snarky Puppy’s Family members Supper, Vol 1. The term bokanté means “exchange” in Creole, the vocabulary of Tirolien’s youngsters — she was raised around the Caribbean isle of Guadeloupe. The support music plus some of its melodies had been written by Little league, demo’ed while on tour with additional bands, and delivered to Tirolien with lyrical ideas attached. Tirolien added lyrics and extra melodies to demos and delivered them back again to Little league. Much of all of those other cast hadn’t actually met until each of them gathered around the 1st day of documenting. After weekly of classes in upstate New York’s Dreamland Studios, the music group emerged using their debut Unusual Circles in 2017 on Music Functions International.