Setona & African Crossroads

• [Live] [Blue Flame, 2006] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

[Live] [Blue Flame, 2006]
Fronted by a cheerfully ambitious, deeply entertaining Sudanese henna artist, wedding consultant and practitioner of traditional female perfume and vapor-bath mysteries, this is the rare live album that busts out with a life and energy its studio counterparts only suggest. Evoking both Ali Hassan Kuban funk and the shaabi shaabi of the Cairo where the former Fatma Ali Adam Uthman now makes her home and helms her business, it romps over ordinary standards of genre decorum in pursuit of the greenback euro. Crazy saxes, Nubian accordions and male singers striving to take control faithfully serve and fruitlessly vie with a desert diva who can steal the show at the launch of a shriek. A-