Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko: Our Calling review – voice and kora duo’s gorgeous songs of longing
Malian kora master Ballaké Sissoko and British Italian songwriter Piers Faccini are both inveterate collaborators (and labelmates) who have previously guested on each other’s records. Here they deliver a full-blown album as a duo, taking the migration of nightingales as their inspiration and following one’s calling as their theme. It’s a gentle, captivating work, its poetic songs soaked in nature imagery and beautifully married to Sissoko’s intricate, dazzling playing. Also present here and there is cellist Vincent Ségal, with further guests on the lute-like ngoni and guembri weaving subtly through the backing.
Faccini’s high, reedy vocals are not the sturdiest, but he’s in robust form here. The songs are packed with longing, whether the pull of another country, a return home or a lost love. One Half of a Dream is impatient to go, blown along by Sissoko’s gusting kora, while Mournful Moon and North and South are steeped in desert blues. A different mood comes with Ninna Nanna, an Italian folk song that’s the only piece not in English, its staccato lyrics leavened by Ségal’s cello. Borne on the Wind is an ode to the wind under bird’s wing that doubles as a paean to lost love – “the light of her song long gone”. Gorgeous stuff.
