Burkinabe Boogie

Here is another one of those artists I had never heard of until poking around in the dingier corners of eMusic. Big in Burkina Faso, Omnipresent in Ouagadougou, Ladies and Gentlemen we present Monsieur Georges Ouedraogo.

Georges has been getting a lot of airplay on Radio Goggins of late and has gone straight to the top of my list of Burkinabe musicians (it is a very short list admittedly, but one packed with quality).
According to the website of the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism of Burkina Faso, when put through the "Google Translate" mangle:

"The artist did in the 60s the heyday of several orchestras including the famous Abidjan Bozambo. Since 1973, the date of his departure from this training, he devoted himself to his solo career in his country, Burkina Faso. Popular singer, adored by its fans, "National Gandaogo" has become a locomotive of the song Burkina Faso". According to another badly translated website Georges celebrated forty years in the music business last year.

I have no idea whether Georges' style of music has a name, but it is a very pleasing mix of some traditional sounds with zouk and other more recent influences - "Mounafica" from his recent album "Tingre" is pretty much a straight out country-soul number, for example. Until informed otherwise I'm going to call it Burkinabe boogie.

Anywhere, here are a couple of examples of his work:

"Ned Kon Yeele" - from "Gnou Zeme" (2000)

"Toog Woodo" - from "Tingre" (2007)

And here is a clip of a very dapper Georges performing a slower, more reggae-tinged version of the latter track: