Faham
Album: Faham : l'Intégrale
Label: UCMM
Tracks: 19
Website: http://www.facebook.com/UtopiaCreationMondialMusic

Faham is born of a relatively recent and shameful part of France's Imperialistic history. As the 50s and 60s saw more migration from the countryside to the towns a grand idea was born to repopulate the countryside with children from orphanages from France's overseas territories. The scheme lead to a lot of discrimination and isolation. Almost naturally the children of this scheme drifted together into loose communities and that lead to music and songs about the shared experience.

"L'Integrale" brings together two albums recorded by Faham, recorded with different line ups due to strains within the combo, partly brought about by the circumstances that brought the musicians together. The album is recorded in France with a Creole influence and a sound that combines harmonies, often in a call and response style with dynamic rhythms.

I'm not a French speaker, so I can't say for certain how political the songs are, but I can say that one thing you definitely get off the album is a sense of anger, of betrayal. There is a lot of the album that feels like it's trying to reach out and connect with something, but is not entirely sure what.

Having heard a lot of French Canadian and Cajun music as well as music from French Caribbean territories I'm used to being able to pick up the nuances across the songs on an album and yet the eighteen tracks featured here don't have that same sense of dynamic, it's as though the whole is far more focused on that single event.

I've found myself returning to "L'Integrale" on a number of occasions, I find it a fascinating release, one well worth understanding. It may not be to every taste, but it does have a real soul to it.

Neil King