As a taster, the French artist has released the track \u201cArawak Uhuru\u201d. \u2018Arawak\u2019 refers to the indigenous peoples of the West Indies \u2013 or more precisely to their language \u2013 and \u2018Uhuru\u2019 means freedom in Swahili. A real three part b\u00e8l\u00e8 (b\u00e8l\u00e8 is a genre of music centred around Martinique, combining singing, drumming, dancing, and storytelling), this song pays tribute to native Caribbean peoples, some of whom S\u00e9l\u00e8ne Saint-Aim\u00e9 counts amongst her forebears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
S\u00e9l\u00e8ne Saint-Aim\u00e9 is a singer-songwriter, double bass player and performer. She started playing music at the age of 18 at the Paris College of Music, then at the Conservatoire de Boulogne-Billancourt. After three years of learning jazz, she flew to New York and continued her education alongside masters of the genre: the saxophonist Steve Coleman took her under his wing, she spent time with the bassist Lonnie Plaxico, and rubbed shoulders with Ron Carter. Playing live has always fuelled her musicology and Saint-Aim\u00e9 has travelled to Cuba, Syracuse, the West Indies, and Morocco to soak up a wide range of rhythms and sounds. Potomitan<\/em>, out on March 25, 2022 via Komos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A revelation at the Victoires du Jazz (French music awards) in 2021, S\u00e9l\u00e8ne Saint-Aim\u00e9 will release her second album on 25th March 2022. After her first jazz album Mare Undarum (\u2018sea of waves\u2019 in Latin) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":99713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3944],"tags":[23842],"location":[],"yst_prominent_words":[8576,8509,9174,9156,9163,11667,25164,8542,9214,8435,14798,25167,20733,28214,28213,8543,28215,8848],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99716"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=99716"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=99716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
For this new album, it is the West Indies that has inspired her, and more particularly the Martinique of her ancestors. The Poto Mitan that give this album its title has a double meaning \u2013 it is the central pillar holding up Haitian voodoo temples, as well as a name for \u2018mother\u2019 in the French West Indies, on whom a family\u2019s balance is based. Recorded in Paris during sessions that were driven by improvisation, the eleven tracks on the album draw from the worlds of traditional Caribbean music. They certainly bear the islands\u2019 signature sounds, with master drummer Sonny Troup\u00e9 (who played ka drums on Mare Undarum<\/em>) and Boris Reine-Adela\u00efde joining on b\u00e8l\u00e8 drums. Making up the band are Cuban saxophonist Irving Acao, Guillaume Latil (cello), Mathias L\u00e9vy (violin), and Hermon Mehari (trumpet). With the gates of improvisation flung wide open, Potomitan<\/em> sounds like a ceremony where the spirits of jazz and S\u00e9l\u00e8ne Saint-Aim\u00e9\u2019s Caribbean heritage fuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pan-african-music-production.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Potomitan-1010x1010.jpeg\")
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