The Trumpet Newspaper Issue 582 (October 19 - November 1 2022)

Entertainment
Yanna Momina - ‘Afar Ways’
OCTOBER 19 - NOVEMBER 1 2022
TheTrumpet
Page9
New album out now on Glitterbeat Records
Yanna Momina’s ‘Afar Ways’
was recorded live in a stilthut
on the horn of Africa
when Grammy-winning producer
and author, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen,
Zomba Prison Project, Ustad Saami)
visited Djibouti in the spring of
2018.
The album is beautifully focused
around Momina’s resonant vocals
and the sparest of musical backings
(acoustic guitar, handclaps,
calabash).
It is the 10th release in
Glitterbeat’s acclaimed “Hidden
Musics” series.
Music is not something the rural
Afar people “do for show,” Momina
asserted. Since most have no
television, it is done for their own
amusement at night. Every night.
As Yanna Momina and Brennan
recorded, the tide came in and they
ended-up surrounded by water.
Throughout the album, the thatch hut
audibly creaks and rocks in the
waves.
Yanna Momina - Afar Ways
music. On the spot she brainstormed
a septuagenarian rap for the ages,
riding an imaginary bass-line for
over ten minutes that could be felt,
though not heard.
Then, after a manic burst of tunes,
Momina asked her band to set down
their instruments and undertook an a
cappella rendition of “My Family
Won’t Let Me Marry the Man I Love
(I Am Forced to Wed My Uncle),” a
song that even the friends gathered
had never heard before.
It was followed by a wordlessness
that made undeniably clear that the
afternoon’s recording had concluded.
Album teaser video:
https://youtu.be/vUp5mExaSVM
Track-listing:
Every One Knows I Have Taken a
Young Lover
Afar Ways
Honey Bee
Ahiyole (“Clapping”)
For My Husband
Heya (Welcome)
The Donkey Doesn’t Listen
My Family Won’t Let Me Marry
the Man I Love (I Am Forced to Wed
My Uncle)
Yanna Momina - lead vocals,
percussion
JP - rhythm guitar, vocals,
percussion
Hussan Jean - calabash,
percussion, background vocals
Andre Fanazara - lead guitar,
background vocals, percussion, lead
vocals on Heya (Welcome)
All songs by Yanna Momina
(except Track 6)
Produced & engineered by Ian
Brennan
Mixed by Craig Parker Adams
(Winslow Court Studio [Los
Angeles])
Photos & video by Marilena Delli
(Executive Producer)
Order the album via Bandcamp:
https://yannamomina.bandcamp.co
m/album/afar-ways
Yanna Momina (photo by Marilena Umuhoza Delli
Born in 1948, Yanna was
discovered while accompanied on a
two-string shingle played with nails
and a matchbox for maracas. She
made a name in the region not just
for her thrilling vibrato, but for being
the rare Afar woman who writes her
own songs.
Brennan states, “Yanna has one of
the most unique voices I’ve ever
heard. She flirts with the edge of
chaos without losing control of her
idiosyncratic phrasing.”
“We set-up to record in a stilthut”
he adds as he describes the
atmosphere of the recording session.
“Moving at the speed of another
culture, what first sounded like a call
to prayer, was only conversation.
And then we began. Momina was
accompanied by a rotating cast of
friends who passed around guitars
and a calabash. They freely offered
up handclaps and background
vocals...in service of the artist they
addressed honorifically as ‘aunt.’”
As an experiment, Brennan asked
Momina to try speaking over some
Yanna Momina (photo by Marilena Umuhoza Delli)