Moonlight Benjamin: Wayo album review — a simmering stew of blues

Moonlight Benjamin’s three albums can be regarded as a triptych: Siltane thick with vodou invocations and hymns to the loas; Simido all-out swaggering rock; and now Wayo, a simmering stew of blues, its very title denoting a cry of pain in the local Creole.

The first two albums were rooted in Haiti, where Benjamin was orphaned at birth and raised by a priest. Their lyrics were rich with the names of Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods — Delmas, Pétion-Ville, Belekou — and shout-outs to the sea-sprit Agwe, to Papa Legba, to the late poet and activist Anthony Lespès. Wayo is more universal in its themes. “It deals more with the philosophical side of things,” says Benjamin, “our anchoring to the earth, our connection to the source.”

Thus, “Taye Banda” worries away at the notion that thoughts create reality rather than vice versa. “The thinking mind is the calculating mind,” growls Benjamin in Creole, “the problem lies in your own brain so cultivate positive thinking”. The song slips neatly into “Ouvé Lespri”, with lengthy Wassoulou-inflected vocal lines that evoke a crossroads as a symbol of the need to open the mind to change. Guitars seethe and stutter.

We are still very much in Haiti, though on “Freedom Fire” — a slow smoulder on which she compares the country to a thatched house catching alight — she wishes for its liberation in English. The music is barely present as she sings, stark chords studded amid the space. On “Bafon” the titular spirit guardian of the dead addresses the cemetery to reassure mourners that the nation is not dead. “Stand up all you zombies,” she murmurs to a bright electric riff. “Tell me this will not stand.”

“I’m tired, I’m tired,” Benjamin sings on the title track, on which she hopes she might be finally relieved from duty. But the spiralling, optimistic Tom Verlaine-inflected guitar ascent tells a different story.

★★★★☆

‘Wayo’ is released by Ma Case