This week's World releases reviewed

NIWEL TSUMBU

Song of the Nations Offbeat Records ****

There's something about his native language, langala, that has infused Congolese guitarist and singer Niwel Tsumbu with a spellbinding fluency. He has an almost hyper-articulate ability to fuse and sunder, meld and saturate his music with naturally kinetic African rhythms, jazz improvisation and the most disciplined flamenco guitar imaginable. In less competent hands such fusion would sink between the weight of dilettantism, but Tsumbu's confident juxtaposition of clarinet and guitar, insistent percussion and declamatory vocals trace a path that's all his own. Echoes of Django Reinhardt and Pierre Bensusan (unexpected bedfellows) hover over Ainsi Va La Vieand its successor, Kinia, but it's the final, hidden track that ultimately hollers from the mountaintop: its tribal rhythms and transcendent male harmonies declare Tsumbu's intention to carve a niche nobody else has even dreamt of. www.niweltsumbu.com