Lo'Jo: World Mojo
by Chris Nickson
WOMAD USA '98 brought a lot of surprises to America: people who'd never had a chance to tour here, and who put on some remarkable shows. But among all the names, there was one who really captured the imagination of audiences.
Prior to their three WOMAD shows, few people in America had even heard of Lo'Jo, the band from France. By the time everything was packing up, the band had a whole new set of fans and enough requests for their most recent album, Mojo Radio, that they were encouraged to set up a website. Not long after, they were signed to Wicklow Records, who will be releasing Lo'Jo's new album, Boheme De Cristal, in the spring of 2000.
They'd impressed at the English WOMAD, too, enough to be regulars on the circuit, to open for Tarika in London in November, and to be asked back to America – not to WOMAD USA, but Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, where they played three more times, and won even more fans.
The music mixes French chanson (with singer/keyboard player Denis Pean coming across as a barefoot, be-hatted, slightly less dissolute Serge Gainsbourg), Algerian rai, West African instrumentation and rhythms with dashes of dub and reggae into an insidious international stew.
The musicians – apart from Pean, there is Richard Bourreau (violin and kora), Nico Gallard (percussion), Guy Raimbault (accordion), Nico Meslien (bass), and sisters Nadin (vocals) and Yasmina Nid El Mourid (vocals and soprano sax) – bring a variety of cultural backgrounds to the band, and it's their chemistry that makes this particular edition of the band so special. Just because they've suddenly burst on the international scene, however, doesn't mean they're brand new.
"I started the band in 1982, with another guy who's no longer in the band," explained Pean. "A year later the violin player came, then the drummer after another year. Then after many different musicians, we have the group as it is today."
A great deal of what Lo'Jo is springs from the imagination of Pean, who also writes much of the material. "I always had a firm idea of what I wanted Lo'Jo to sound like, but each musician contributes a lot. So it's not exactly my music, or any one person's music. Lo'Jo is the music we do together."
This is an excerpt. Read the full article in Dirty Linen #86 (Feb/Mar '00).
