Jean-Luc Ponty and Africa Project
Jean-Luc Ponty: violin, keyboards, electric violin and viola
Martin Atangana: guitar
Alain Toko: guitar (from West Cameroon)
Guy N'Sangue: bass
Brice Wassy: drums, percussion
Moustapha Cisse: percussion
Maribe Maka (spelling?): vocals
Myriam Betty: vocals
(thanks to piikea for spelling help with some of these names and track 9 title correction)
promoting their CD "Tchokola"

Berklee Performance Center
Boston, Mass. U.S.A.
October 5, 1991
(1st show of 2)
source: 1st generation audience tape
runtime: 119:50 (minutes/ seconds)

setlist:
disc 1 55:44
1: Mam' Maï 9:53
2: Sakka Sakka 10:41
3: N'Fan Môt 11:57
4: Cono 6:58
5: Mouna Bowa 10:02
6: Yé Ké Yé Ké 6:13

disc 2 64:05
7: band introductions 2:18
8: open mind 9:44
9: Bamako 7:19
10: elephants in love 6:41
11: Tchokola 15:37
12: Shakara (Fela Kuti) 9:49
13: Rhum 'n' zouc 7:55
14: bottle bop 4:42

lineage: Naka. CM-100 mikes (maybe 300's?) > Sony D-5 cassette deck (dolby off) > master cassettes > my cassettes
(copied Naka. to Naka. no dolby, both Maxell XLII-S) > played on Nak. 125 into soundforge (wav) > FLAC 6 > torrent.

first seeded in 2008. reseeded in Oct. 2009 with some corrections.
reseeded in 2015 with total and track times,
some spelling corrections
and a flac > wav > flac (sb's aligned) reconversion to remove the sbe's.
this is a seamless recording
disc break is just a recommendation if burning to disc.
A Stud Muffin Production.
Even for the Doctor, this is one fine recording.
A You Are There production, for sure.
Do not sell this recording.
share freely, losslessly and gaplessly.


This is the complete 1st of 2 sold-out shows from Boston with Africa Project, a fine performance and a great recording. There is some background noise when Ponty is talking, but none when the music is playing, everything comes through, well, like a Stud Muffin Production. I know the Doctor likes Ponty alot, and has shared a couple of his great recordings with me. This is one of his best of all, I think. No music is cut, both flips were between songs and unlike some who gave me recordings on cassette, he usually makes sure to give me the whole thing complete as he has it. Haven't seen the Doctor (or any doctor) in years, hope he's doing well and seeing (recording) lots of Clapton, McLaughlin and Roxy Music concerts.

I did not do any fade in or fade out in this except at the end of the concert, so if you save to DAT or disc, you won't lose any continuity on this. There are several places you can break this up (without editing or awkward start to disc 2) if burning to disc and want different break point. Ponty talks about the music before most of these songs, explaining the origin and inspiration behind them, and the tracking of each song begins where that talk begins, not where the song begins as I sometimes do instead. All the new songs of this tour (all but 3 in this concert) have African names (so too the musicians in this tour) and my spelling here was wrong on most of them when this was first posted in 2008 (including the title song of their album). thankfully that has all been corrected this time. I just removed the titles for the 2009 seeding from the flac files since several were misspelled, (thus new fpt was needed) but they are the same sound files as the original post's were, no audio changes were made to them. This was the tour of the CD "Tchokola" and all the music is of African influence, a very new direction for Jean-Luc Ponty music and in this show anyway, a very good one.

There are a few "familiar" Ponty songs but most of it is about African culture, very different for him musically and as is so often true of Ponty music, this is not the same old thing as yesterday. Ponty's never done anything like this before or since, I've never heard his other bands play any of the "Tchokola" music he was promoting on this tour. I doubt any of his other bands could play it. So if you didn't hear this tour, and like the "Tchokola" CD, here's another chance to hear a really nice recording and show of the Africa Project. if you haven't heard it, you should. the band was not always the same throughout the tour, some changes were made because many very good musicians wanted to be involved in this Africa Project. The talking about it is rather quiet, tough to hear clearly, but all the music comes through strong (as is expected routinely in a stud muffin production).