Gabon

''Another musical (re)discovery by Armand de Preseau'' World Music Record Collector, Digger & DJ from Paris (FR) / Label Manager. Specialized in World Music of the 60's to the 80's, especially in African & West Indies Music.

http://africangrooves.fr/

'Pierre-Claver Akendengué born April 25, 1943 is a musician and composer of Gabon. In 1974, Akendengué recorded his first album, Nandipo, which consisted of songs of his own composition, sung in French and Nkomi, accompanied by guitar, women choir, bass and the percussion of Nana Vasconcelos.'

'On Nandipo, a collaboration with Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, Akendengue shows that he is not only a gifted musician and poet but also proves his theatrical instincts. Rather than presenting a loose set of songs, he offers a mini-play where each track on the album represents a scene. The interplay between instruments and voices is full of exciting tension from beginning to end. For Akendengue, Nandipo was a masterly debut which laid the foundations of his status as one of the giants of African music.' -AllMusic Review by Frank Eisenhuth

'Pierre Akendengue is one of the most outstanding African artists -- a musician, poet, philosopher, and visionary. His influence on African music is immense; in this sense, he is easily comparable to Francis Bebey or Youssou N'Dour. In his native Gabon, he is considered to be a musical genius, in the francophone world, he is at least reasonably well-known, but outside this diaspora his work has remained almost unnoticed and many of his recordings are not easily available -- most of them one has to hunt down. This is a shame, as -- like Bebey and N'Dour -- he was already active when the term "world music" was not even coined yet, and the work of this innovator belongs on the shelves of the timeless and great music of our era and should therefore be widely known. Akendengue started composing as a child, and when he was a teenager, his songs were already broadcasted on Gabonese radio stations. When he was in his twenties he came to France to study literature and psychology. During this time he was confronted with quickly deteriorating eyesight which eventually led to his blindness. After his studies in Orléans, Caen, and Paris, he shortly returned to Gabon, but due to his critical attitude towards the Gabonese government, he was forced into exile to France in the beginning of the '70s. In 1974 he released his debut Nandipo, which solidly established his reputation as a witty songwriter with philosophical depth. 1976's Afrika Obota even topped the success of his debut in earning him an MIDEM award for Best Francophone Songs. Since then, he has released a steady stream of excellent recordings: His third album, Eseringuila, released in 1978, won him the Maraccas d'Or award as Best African Record in 1979. 1985 saw him settling again in Gabon. His 1986 release Piroguier is considered to be a classic of African music. In the '90s, Akendengue embarked on much more adventurous shores; together with French composer and producer Hughes de Courson he released Lambarena, an experiment in merging the music of German baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach with African traditional music. With his releases Maladalité (1995) and Carrefour Rio (1997), Akendengue returned to more conventional terrain and proved once again his reputation as a master of sophisticated, multilayered theatrical songwriting.' -Artist Biography by Frank Eisenhuth

'Pierre Akendengué is one of African music's great visionaries —a onetime protest singer turned composer turned cult favorite turned cultural minister, Akendengué has always marched to the beat of his own drummer.

Born in 1943 in Aouta, Gabon, Akendengué left Gabon at the age of 22 to pursue an Education in France. There he settled in Orléans (and later, Paris), where he took a degree in psychology and sought treatment for his poor eyesight. It was during his student days that he first became interested in a musical career, enrolling at the famous Petit Conservatoire de la Chanson in 1967. He flourished as a singer, coming in third in La fine fleur de la chanson, a national song contest.

In 1974, he made his French recording debut, Nandipo, an evocative meditation on his childhood in Africa, which established him as a protest singer inveighing against colonialism and neo-colonialism. This album was followed in 1976 by Africa Obota, which took home he "Prix de la jeune chanson française" at the Midem conference in Cannes. But while Akendengué's European career began to take off, his visibility back home in Gabon began to suffer, as he could no longer afford to return home to perform on a regular basis.

By the late '70s, Akendengué was frustrated with being pigeonholed as merely a protest singer and begin to focus more on composing and instrumental arrangements. In 1978 he also founded his own label, Ntche (Homeland), and began to focus on behind-the-scenes aspects of the business and developing young new artists. But the label went under in 1982 after releasing only three albums.

In that same year, Akendengué signed onto CBS records and recorded Mando. Released in 1983, the album was produced by French visionary Hugues de Courson and featured over thirty session musicians and some of Akendengué's most incendiary lyrics to date (sung entirely in the Myéné language of Gabon). He toured extensively following this record before returning to Gabon in 1985.

There, despite increasingly serious health and vision problems, Akendengué continued to record sporadically, compiling a greatest hits album (Passé Composé) and an anti-apartheid album (Espoir à Soweto) as the '80s waned. In the early '90s, Akendengué once again teamed up with Hugues de Courson to record his masterpiece, Lambarena, an ambitious, groundbreaking musical tribute to Dr. Albert Schweitzer that set J.S. Bach's "Passion of St. John" to the accompaniment of traditional folkloric ensembles from Gabon. Recorded in Paris in a marathon session that lasted almost one hundred days, de Courson and Akendengue teamed up a European classical choir and orchestral players with ten different Gabonese ensembles as well as a battery of soloists, including Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos. The result was one of the most sublime and intricate fusions of European art music and African traditional music ever recorded, and it remains a touchstone for African music aficionados to this day.

Akendengué followed this work with 1996's Maladité, 1997's Carrefour Rio 2001's Obakadences and 2005's Ekunda-Sah!, and continues to record today, but since his return to Gabon, he's also embraced another calling separate from his musical career. Always deeply engaged on a cultural level, Akendengué worked as a close assistant to Gabon's Minister of Culture and eventually became one of President Omar Bongo's most influential advisors on cultural matters. In 1997 he was recognized for his outstanding work on behalf of Gabonese culture with the award of the "Prix d'excellence" at the Africa Music awards in Libreville. Most recently Akendengue has been working to document and preserve the music of the Pymgy and Bantu peoples of Gabon's forest belt.

In April 2006, Akendengué released Gorée, a moving meditation on the African slave trade based on the slave fort on Senegal's Gorée Island.' (Tom Pryor, National Geographic)

Biography

'The Gabonese Pierre Akendengué has been a pre-eminent figure in African culture for almost four decades; a gifted musician (songwriter/singer/guitarist/arranger) with an output of 18 albums up to 2006, a subtle poet, a story-teller, a philosopher and a militant for peace, human rights & African unity. Although he has received a number of awards as a recognition of his work, still Akendengué remains rather unknown (at least outside the francophone world), in spite of the so-called "world music" trend and a lot of his records are not easily available to Western audiences.

Akendengué was born in Gabon, a French colony in West Africa which gained its independence in the beginning of 1960s, as so many other West African countries. He was raised in a musical family, got acquainted with the traditional festive and sacred music of his homeland and started composing at an early age (his songs were already broadcast on Gabonese radio stations when he was a teenager). Suffering from an eye disease, he left for France at the age of 22 to seek medical treatment and complete his studies. In France, he received a degree in literature in Caen and studied psychology (he finally got a Ph.D. in 1976); besides that, he pursued his career as a musician by enrolling at the Petit Conservatoire ran by famous singer Mireille, where a lot of stars of the modern chanson francaise also studied. It was there where the musician and producer Pierre Barouh discovered him, which led to the release of Akendengue's debut album, Nandipo, at the Barouh-owned label Saravah, with the participation of the renowned Brazilian percussionist Naná Vasconcelos.

By that time, Akendengue, was practically forced in self-exile in France and his songs stopped getting airplay in Gabon for his criticism of the Gabonese regime (he got a presidential pardon in 1977), while he was getting all the more popular in France. For his second album, Afrika Obota (translating as "Africa my mother", with lyrics in French and myéné, his mother tongue), which came out in 1976, he was awarded the prize for "Best Young French Song" at Cannes MIDEM festival.

He released another three records in Paris at Ntye (also referred as Ntche, meaning "homeland"), a label he launched himself to control his own work and also promote young african artists. Following the shutdown of this label as a result of financing problems, he signed a contract with CBS, where he released Mando, produced by composer and producer Hughes de Courson, which included the single "Epuguzu", considered to be one of the landmark African pop songs of the 1980's.

In 1985, he decided to get back to his homeland Gabon and settled in Libreville, the capital city and soon became cultural counselor for the head of State (he retains the position until today). He continued producing more or less systematically, (among others, he produced the original score for the film "Sarraouinia" in 1986). In 1993, he collaborated again with Hughes de Crancy, on a most ambitious project of his career fusing sacred Gabonese music with Johannes Sebastien Bach's chants & cantatas. The project, which involved 250 african singers and 50 classical musicians, led to the widely acclaimed ..., which must be his best selling effort even today (though Akendengue didn't exactly benefit from the album's success).

Akendengué finally got recognition from his native country in 1997, when he received the "Prix d'Excellence" at the African Music Awards held at Libreville.

In spite of his health problems, Akendendengué is still actively producing and also giving concerts, mostly in Africa but also in Europe. In 2006, Gorée was released (by Lusafrica).

Musically, Akendengué in the span of the 30 years that he recorded, has covered a broad spectrum of the various genres of contemporary African popular music. Light melodies and ballads are his trademark, leaving ample room for his distinctive voice, in which he narrates his symbolic, highly politicized lyrics.

His artistic achievements have strongly influenced a number of well-known contemporary African musicians; he was one of the pioneers of the explosion of African music in France, which helped artists such as Salif Keita, Touré Kunda or Youssou N'Dour reach Western audiences. Unfortunately, Akendengué himself has never gained such exposure.'