Abidjan-Brussels: Manou Gallo and the Women’s Band

Photo Credits : Olivia Droeshaut

In collaboration with the Francophone Council for the Song (Quebec) and the Wallonia-Brussels Agency

“Manou Gallo takes the principle that music knows no borders and applies it to a performance where she invites two international stars to join her: Tanga Rema, the brother of and composer for Khadja Nin, from Burundi, as well as the rapper Balo, a former member of Starflam, which is a highly regarded rap group in Belgium. Manou sings, speaks to the audience, creates an ambiance that affects each song profoundly, and, as needed, she allows herself sentence structures that are sometimes quite dense as in Earth, marked with solemnity.
RFI Musique

“Manou is much more than just the bass player for the group Zap Mama. Not merely an extraordinary musician, she is also one of the most sensual voices on the new African stage and beyond.”
The Red Ant (a French blog focusing on international culture and politics)
Photo credit: Olivia Droeshaut

The Performer

Manou Gallo, from Divo, a small city in west central Ivory Coast, was gently rocked throughout her childhood by the traditional rhythms of Djiboi. Over the years, she forged a solid rhythmical experience by beating the talking drums of her place of birth, which aroused the admiration and astonishment of her neighbors.
While she was still in her teens she became a member of the group Woya, which became famous in West Africa. After being on tour several times in Africa and recording four CDs, Manou Gallo developed her own style of music, something between Afrobeat, funk, and world music, with a strong measure of modern influence, tradition, and the spice of personal inspiration.

In 1992, Michel de Bock who was then tour manager for Zap Mama, followed her career at the MASA in Abidjan, an international market that presents new artists’s work. The two began to believe in each other. Manou Gallo went to Brussels and became the bass player in the group Zap Mama. For six years now, Manou Gallo has been on every tour, going the world over to play Zap’s music. In 1999, she joined the group the Drums of Brazza for  a few concerts. She was the lone female performer at that time.

In 2001, Manou took her career a step further and formed her own group, the Djiboi, made up of musician-friends living in Belgium, and became associated with Poney Gross from the Zig-Zag World Agency, who would handle management.  Manou is a modern African woman of the diaspora. Her music reflects this, as it does her own background, braided together by differing cultural and historic roots.

Based on original research starting with African polyrhythms that she fuses with blues, funk groove, and rock, Manou Gallo’s songs are of Africa, Ivory Coast, women and their joys and sorrows. In 2008, she presented new work with the Women Band. The little girl from Divo has grown up to become the Drum Woman and a musician who plays many instruments.

Program

Duration: 80 minutes
Manou Gallo & the Women’s Band

Overcoming her sense of modesty and propriety and transgressing the borders imposed by culture, her upbringing and her roots, Manou Gallo has tried to find deep within her the resources needed to write the material for this new show, which is extremely personal. Filled with the sounds from her two homes, Abidjan and Brussels, Manou Gallo is carried forward in this work by joy and revolt, anger and generosity, pain and hope. This is a musical show drawing from many sources, whose formula is both a semi-acoustic style, and a theme of woman among women,  Manou Gallo is sensual and generous and sings about the love she no longer fears. With an Afrobeat, Manou Gallo gives us a show that is intimate and poetic at the same time.

Cast

Manou Gallo: lead vocal, bass, guitar, drums
Anja Naucler: cello, backup vocals
Virna Nova: guitar, backup vocals
Fabrice Thompson: drums

Links to the artist’s web site and to audio clips :
http://www.manougallo.com/
www.zigzagworld.be 
http://www.myspace.com/manougallo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBvzT4bimro&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDRLYu1RyhI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FwHEM8_LCQ

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