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Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Description: African music from Baaba Maal, Zimbabwean artist Oliver Mtukudzi and benga four-piece Extra Golden.
Phone: 0844482 8008
Website: www.roundhouse.org.uk
Email: info@roundhouse.org.uk
Trains: Tube: Chalk Farm 
, Tube / Bus: 24, 27, 29, 31, 134, 135, 168, 214, 253, 274, C2 
Extra info: Pub, Food
Soul Rebel: Baaba Maal
“We are coming from Zimbabwe,” said Oliver Mtukudzi, centre stage. There was a huge cheer from the audience. “In Zimbabwe music is like food,” he continued. But typically, he didn’t follow his statement to its logical conclusion to talk about a country in which food and everything else, except bluster from Mugabe, is in short supply.
Tuku, as Mtukudzi is popularly known, is still resident in Zimbabwe and, while widely seen as an opposition supporter, chooses not to make political allegiances but play music to help people endure. “Where we come from you don’t get to sing when you have nothing to say,” he says, looking like a man of the people in a flat cap with an electric guitar slung round his neck. “We talk about our pain and our frustrations, but most of all we use music to defuse tension.” At home Mtukudzi clearly has his work cut out but last night at the Roundhouse his goodtime music, with joyous guitar, marimba and twanging mbira thumb piano, ended the evening in a rousing celebratory dance.
The show kicked off with Extra Golden, two American rock musicians interested in Kenyan benga guitar music with Kenyan musicians on vocals and drums. Their best ingredient is their PR story. They won senator Barack Obama’s support to get the Kenyans into the US and recorded a song which was used in his presidential campaign.
Musically the set never took off. They have a fine drummer, but it needed some Kenyan spirit on the guitars.
From Senegal Baaba Maal brought African majesty. To begin, he was regal, like an African prince, but then cast off his red and gold robe to get the crowd moving to vibrant dance numbers with spectacular djembe from Mamadou Sarr. Baaba Maal returned at the close to join Mtukudzi singing “Zimbabwe, Tuku, Senegal, Zimbabwe”, a final hymn to African solidarity.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
