Bokanté

Bokanté originated as a collaborative project initiated by Michael League of Snarky Puppy. League characterizes the multicultural, multilingual, and multigenerational group’s aesthetic as a "weird combination of West African music, Delta blues, and Led Zeppelin and Caribbean kaladja (with lyrics in Creole and French)." The octet features League himself handling baritone guitar and bass, lap and pedal steel guitarist Roosevelt Collier (Lee Boys, Karl Denson), Snarky Puppy guitarists Chris McQueen and Bob Lanzetti, and percussionists Jamey Haddad (Paul Simon, Sting), André Ferrari (Väsen), and Keita Ogawa (Banda Magda, Yo-Yo Ma), with veteran trilingual vocalist Malika Tirolien—leader of her own quintet and a participant on Snarky Puppy’s Family Dinner, Vol 1—serving as frontwoman.

In Creole, the term bokanté translates to “exchange,” the tongue Tirolien spoke while growing up on Guadeloupe. League composed the instrumental foundations and select melodies during downtime on the road with other ensembles, forwarding those tracks to Tirolien alongside thematic prompts for lyrics. She responded by layering in her own words and further melodic ideas before returning the material. Most of the remaining musicians convened for the first time only upon arriving at the studio. Following seven days of tracking at Dreamland Studios in upstate New York, the ensemble completed its debut album, Strange Circles, issued in 2017 via Music Works International.