Leni Stern Joins Salif Keita to Cover U2's "One"

NY TIMES Praises Stern as “A Guitarist and Vocalist with an Ethereal Sensibility"

U.S. Tour Dates Confirmed for San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Maryland and more

Leni Stern's embrace of African music has led her to become a sort of folk hero in Mali and Senegal, the locations of her most-recent visits to the continent. She comments: “I felt that my presence, as a white woman, an electric guitarist, and singer illustrated the point that music transcends religion, gender and race." In fact, Stern has become a regular presence on AFRICABLE, where her music video for the track 'Alu Maye' has been airing multiple times each day.

Stern's new CD 'Africa' continues to earn praise for its authenticity and for Stern's decision to record the album in Africa, with African musicians, at the pace of African life. Two years in the making, the CD integrates African and Western music forms with such distinction that it may come to be regarded as an 'Audio Documentary' of African musical life. Stern notes: “I want people to hear what Africa sounds like. Africa deserves our respect, not just our mercy."

Stern's follow-up trip, last month, was intended as an opportunity for her to say 'thank you' to all of the musicians who worked on the CD...but it evolved into a far more involved journey, which included concert performances and a recording session with the legendary Salif Keita, during which they covered U2's “ONE", with Stern on guitar and Keita on vocals. More details about this recording will be announced in the weeks ahead. Until then, see Leni Stern's first-person diary of the trip, which follows below.

Critical support for Leni Stern's eclectic music has grown in recent years, and coverage of her new 'Africa' CD is no exception, with an upcoming CNN RADIO segment set to air on 'Measure To Measure', a multi-page spread in the new issue of Guitar Player, an in-depth interview feature coming to All About Jazz, CD coverage in the 1/08 issue of Downbeat, and more.

Nate Chinen of The New York Times recently described Stern as “A guitarist and vocalist with an ethereal sensibility," and Time Out NY praised: “Singer-guitarist Leni Stern was mixing elegant jazz moves with adult-pop balladry long before most of today's best- selling stars had appeared on the scene. Africa, her latest disc, shows the inspiration of her West African travels and the lingering spirit of saxophonist Michael Brecker."

LENI STERN - UPCOMING PERFORMANCES:

Nov 13 :: 55 bar New York City

Nov 21st :: Bowery Poetry Club New York City

Nov 28th :: Freight and Salvage San Francisco

Dec 1st :: The Metropolitan Cafe Los Angeles

Dec 5th :: 55 bar New York City

Jan 17th :: Scullers Boston

Jan 22nd :: Yoshi's San Francisco

Feb 12th :: University of Maryland College Park, MD

LENI STERN'S TRAVEL DIARY - MALI & SENEGAL, 10/07:

My recent trip to Africa was planned to be just a visit to say thank you to all the musicians, and to bring the finished CD to everyone who had worked on it. I started in Dakar Senegal, where I had recorded and written “Childsoldier" with three musicians in Baaba Maal's band: Hilaire Chaby, Massamba and M'barra Cisse, and also with Abdou Rachman, the Engineer. My visit coincided with the celebrations that mark the end of the month of Ramadan. Baaba Maal played a concert at the stadium in Daakar, and invited me to join him and his band on stage.

Baaba has coined the term “Friends of Africa" -- I first heard him mention it on a TV show we appeared on together in Bamako, Mali last Spring. He uses it to describe people that come to Africa out of love for its culture, the music, the arts, the films, the stories -- not to take from Africa, and leave. He is very involved in politics -- he is the UN Ambassador for the Youth of Senegal, and he is very outspoken about many issues concerning the treatment of musicians in Africa. I felt that my presence, as a white woman, electric guitarist, and singer in this concert was to illustrate the point that music transcends religion, gender and race -- regardless of who we are, we can celebrate Ramadan together. I don't know Wolloff or Pular, the local languages, enough to understand what he said on stage. I just heard my name spoken and sung by him. We performed 'Alu Maye' together, the song that tells the story of how I got my African name Oumou, and how i got accepted into the line of storytellers. When I came down from the stage, a group of fans was waiting for me, all women. They took their perfumes from their purses and started spraying me. I went home in a cloud of Chanel.

I left for Bamako the next day. It's only an hour away, and I got there in the afternoon, in time to visit Ami Sacko, Bassekou Kouyate and all the children. I was amazed how happy everyone was to see their names on the CD cover. I think that African artists rarely mention their sidemen. I felt so happy seeing everyone again.

I met Salif the next day at Moffou. He asked me to perform with his band for their Ramadan concert on Saturday night. I loved going back to the rehearsals with everybody. It was as if I had never left. Haruna, Prince, Solo...I took my usual spot on stage and off we went. The concert was amazing. Before the 2nd set, the last of the monsoon rains poured down on us.

It didn't get any cooler. The music video of Alu Maye is running on Africable twice a day, so the audience recognized me. Abu, my Malian engineer, had told me about the Bono project. He said that Salif wasn't sure about doing it, because he thinks he can't sing in English. Salif asked me, however, to put down guitars for the U2 song 'ONE'. He came into the studio, during the recording, and started singing along softly, in English, with an accent, but I didn't think it took away from the song, and told him so. We decided to try vocal tracks the next day.

I had my doubts how anyone but Bono could sing this song, but when you hear Salif it is very obvious that he was meant to do this. What an amazing experience to witness him recording this track. I really hope that everyone gets to hear it. On my return to Daakar, Baaba asked me to record with him. I played on 3 songs. One of them is the story of a bird so beautiful that everybody falls in love with him, tries to catch him. But the bird prefers his freedom to all the beautiful things he gets offered. A golden palace isn't what he wants, he wants to fly. Very interesting, I thought. Baaba asked me to come back to record and play more. I'll return to Senegal next week.