Céline Rudolph and Lionel Loueke’s Obsession Tour

By Ayodele Efunla

As part of their West Africa Music Tour 2018, Céline Rudolph (Germany) and Lionel Loueke (Benin Republic), performed at The Jazzhole on Thursday in Lagos, Nigeria. The event was hosted by Jazzhole, a renowned music and bookstore, in conjunction with Goethe-Institut, Lagos.

According to Goethe-Institut’s website: “A singer playing the guitar. A guitarist who sings. An album on which these two exceptional characters show that in music, too, the whole can be bigger than the sum of its parts. Their common “obsession” opens up musical horizons, sounds like jazz and singer-songwriter-elegance, a trip from Cotonou via Rio to Memphis and Berlin. It is music that speaks for life, blues and pleasure. This duo, which at least sounds like a band, sometimes even as an orchestra, sings ten favorite songs, sometimes English, sometimes French, sometimes the Fantastic Célinish or Lionelish. It is believed that the pieces have always been known after the first hearing, but only one interpretation (Caetano Veloso’s “O Leãozinho”), the rest comes from the feathers of the two possessed.”