Having disappeared from the music scene for decades, to the point where some thought him dead, singer Malan Mané, the undeniable voice of the people of Guinea-Bissau within the group Super Mama Djombo, recorded his first solo album in early 2022 in Lisbon, at the famous Valentim de Carvalho studios, the same place where the legendary group's historical recordings were made in 1979. The album features eleven songs that often invite listeners to sway on the dance floor, with close-knit rhythms, guitars at full throttle, and slightly husky, perfectly pitched voices that evoke the values of friendship and loyalty, proclaiming that freedom is priceless – and Malan paid dearly for it – and celebrating the great names who enabled Africa to envision a future: Nelson Mandela, and then Amilcar Cabral, who still sets the tone by lending his nickname, 'the lion's son,' as the title for this resurrection. A powerful symbol. This splendid album matured over thirty years, a condensation of the most beautiful songs Malan crafted in the solitude of exile. The overwhelming melancholy of the masterpiece 'Recado,' addressed to the people during the 1998 civil war. The exhilarating Afrobeat rhythms of 'Lana ribada,' a memory of moonlit nights in the Guinea-Bissau countryside. The deliciously swinging humor of desire in 'Ma Na Balança.' In Malan, there is an art of making one smile and be moved at the same time, something of a grace in his breath, in the elegance and energy of his phrasing, in the jubilation of the call-and-response with the choirs. There is also a grandeur, a pride: an extraordinary height from which the musician thinks in 'Nelson Mandela.' The heartbreaking sincerity of the solitude recounted in 'Tubabubdu Sio (In the Land of the Whites).' This solitude was broken by his return to the studio in early 2022. And it is this joy that we hear as well. The joy of reuniting with old companions, Sadjo, Tundu, Armando. Of rediscovering the ever-instantaneous understanding, the intact demanding spirit. The joy after certain takes of knowing that it was there, that je ne sais quoi that makes all the difference. The joy of simply rediscovering music. --- Sylvain Prudhomme ---
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