Electric Sweat: Burkina Electric brings electronic music to West Africa and back

Even the most ardent hater of preppy, peppy indie-rock band Vampire Weekend has to appreciate the attention the group has helped bring to the music of West Africa—particularly when it’s played by actual West Africans. Burkina Electric hails from Burkina Faso, though band members also call New York City and Dusseldorf, Germany, home. The group’s music reflects its international make-up, blending the rhythms and sounds of traditional West African music with 21st-century electronic dance grooves on its debut, Paspanga. Burkina Electric comes to Milwaukee Saturday at the invitation of local ensemble Present Music, which will perform the string-quartet piece "Moving Houses" by Burkina Electric percussionist and acclaimed composer Lukas Ligeti. Ligeti spoke about the genesis of Burkina Electric with The A.V. Club.

The A.V. Club: Burkina Electric claims to be the first electronica band from Burkina Faso. Is that true?

Lukas Ligeti: It all depends on your definition of electronica, of course. In the conventional definition of the way we usually understand it in the West, that's true. There's a very lively hip-hop scene in Burkina Faso, and of course rap music uses a lot of electronic beats, but that's not the main aspect of it. In the case of Burkina Electric, we really base our music very much on electronic sounds and electronic means of sound alteration.

AVC: How did the band come together? Did you handpick the musicians?

LL: An Austrian organization knew that I was working with electronica in Africa, and I was doing work in Burkina Faso, so they invited me to do something with  and electronica and musicians from Burkina Faso. I pulled together some friends, and we started this band together. We did a tour in Austria, and we all enjoyed doing it so much we decided to make it an ongoing band. [My bandmates] are all people I had worked with previously, so I put the band together for an occasion, but it became a band through our longstanding friendships.

AVC: How did you meet everyone?

LL: In 1994 I was sent to the Ivory Coast by the Goethe Institut to collaborate with traditional musicians from West Africa. It was a fantastic, life-changing experience, and I co-founded a band called Beta Foly. I worked with the three musicians in Burkina Electric then, so I met everyone in the Ivory Coast, and we stayed friends and kept collaborating on various things. 

AVC: Why did you choose to study Burkina Faso's music? 

LL: Burkina Faso is a country whose music is very little known generally. Some countries in Africa, like Mali and Senegal, are very exposed in the world-music scene, so a lot of people interested in world music and African music know Mali and Senegal well, but even world-music fans don't know what's going on in Burkina Faso. It's a very isolated country in a certain way because it's landlocked, and it often flies under the radar. There's a big film festival there, so it's got a very lively film scene. 

But like many countries in Africa, it's very diverse, and there's more than 60 languages spoken in the country. Almost anywhere you go in Africa you'll find completely different songs and tunings for instruments. So it's hard to characterize Burkina Faso because it's also a mosaic of these many  different styles, traditions and tendencies.  

AVC: Do you think Burkina Electric's hybridization of music makes your sound more accessible to Western audiences? Is that important to you?

LL: I don't know. One thing I've observed is people don't really know how to dance to our rhythms, but towards the end of our concerts, everyone's dancing. Every concert is a hybrid. It's not our mission to make our music more accessible. We do what we like to do.