Yundum Niko

The song I am reviewing this week is called "Yundum Niko" by Jali Nyama Suso. I did a little bit of research on Suso and found out that he originally hailed from Gambia in West Africa. He gained recognition in the country for playing the kora, a 21-string lute-bridge-harp, and has been hailed "one of the greatest kora players of the 20th century". He had a radio program in Gambia for twenty years and then served as a resident artist at the University of Washington, where he released his first album in 1971. In the 1980s he toured around Europe.

When I played the song, the opening lines reminded me of flowing water. This remained true for about the first twenty seconds, while the notes and rhythm flowed freely and to my ears, sounded fairly unorganized- an example of polyrhythm. He seemed to be improvising on the kora. After these initial twenty seconds, however, a more steady tempo inserted itself into the piece, and after that the song progressed with a more consistent tempo, which seemed to be three beats per measure. There seemed to be a lot of improvisation in the vocals, which added a really interesting layer to this piece and made it a bit more unpredictable. I could hear a soft, long grunting throughout the song, but just barely. A few times before any singing began, and other times throughout the piece when there were no lyrics. I found this to be an interesting layer to the song. I really had to listen closely to be able to hear it and I do not think I even really acknowledged the grunting the first time through when playing the song. It kind of flew under the radar while my ears were busy listening for the complexities of the piece. Much of the vocals kind of bursted into the piece and the lyrics sped up and slowed down unexpectedly many times. The other instruments, too, accelerated and decelerated unexpectedly many times throughout the song.

I think that there are a lot of aspects to this piece that my ears are still missing out on, even after playing it all the way through several times. My ears have definitely been trained for Western music that, generally, maintains a constant rhythm. The instrumentation and rhythm in Yundum Niko sounded fairly random to me for the most part, and even though there were very few instruments used, the music was anything but simple. While listening to the piece I had to wonder how my listening experience would compare to that of a person who is more familiar with music of jali tradition- are there layers to the song they would be able to recognize that I was not initially able to perceive? Do parts of the song that sounds random to me not seem so to them? Although I had never heard anything like this piece before, I can say that I throughly enjoyed it, and found it very relaxing despite it's complexities and seemingly random rhythms.