Pierre Akendengué

Pierre Akendengue is among the most excellent African performers — a musician, poet, philosopher, and visionary. His impact on African music is normally immense; within this sense, he’s easily much like Francis Bebey or Youssou N’Dour. In his indigenous Gabon, he’s regarded as a musical genius, within the francophone globe, he is a minimum of fairly well-known, but outside this diaspora his function has remained nearly unnoticed and several of his recordings aren’t common — many of them you have to look for. That is a pity, as — like Bebey and N’Dour — he had been active once the term “globe music” had not been also coined however, and the task of the innovator belongs on the cabinets of the classic and great music in our era and really should as a result be well known. Akendengue began composing as a kid, so when he was an adolescent, his songs had been currently broadcasted on Gabonese r / c. When he is at his twenties he found France to review literature and mindset. During this time period he was met with quickly deteriorating eyesight which ultimately resulted in his blindness. After his research in Orléans, Caen, and Paris, he quickly came back to Gabon, but because of his vital attitude to the Gabonese federal government, he was compelled into exile to France in the very beginning of the ’70s. In 1974 he released his debut Nandipo, which solidly set up his reputation being a witty songwriter with philosophical depth. 1976’s Afrika Obota also topped the achievement of his debut in gaining him an MIDEM award for Greatest Francophone Songs. Since that time, he provides released a reliable stream of exceptional recordings: His third record, Eseringuila, released in 1978, gained him the Maraccas d’Or prize as Greatest African Record in 1979. 1985 noticed him settling once again in Gabon. His 1986 discharge Piroguier is known as to be always a traditional of African music. Within the ’90s, Akendengue embarked on a lot more ambitious shores; as well as People from france composer and maker Hughes de Courson he released Lambarena, an test in merging the music of German baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach with African traditional music. Along with his produces Maladalité (1995) and Carrefour Rio (1997), Akendengue came back to more regular terrain and demonstrated once more his reputation like a master of advanced, multilayered theatrical songwriting.