
“35 years on, Lo’Jo are still surprising us” Songlines
“Hypnotic” The Sunday Times
“Kaleidoscopic journey …One of their best album” The Guardian
“Lo’Jo are France’s most interesting and indefinable group” London Evening Standard
“Lo’Jo have the power to mesmerize and delight with every tune.” Billboard
“Delicious, melodic and unique” Music Week
“They have to be one of the best live bands in the world now.” The Independent
To describe the music played by Lo’Jo, one would have to delve both into a dictionary of the world’s rhythms and an encyclopedia of universal harmonies. One would borrow from them adjectives like “shamanic”, “polyglot”, and wander from savannas to deserts, from rivers to oceans. Denis Pean, Lo’Jo’s visionary founder, is a poet philosopher in the finest French tradition. He formed Lo’Jo, a band of musicians, artists and actors, a while ago, and they have developed into one of France’s great musical families. They were instrumental in the first Festival in the Desert in Mali in 2001, and it was Lo’Jo who first brought the hugely successful Tinariwen to European attention.
This angelic French tribe has been roving the world with its heterogeneous and eclectic musical luggage. Not a band, rather a collective of incorrigible globe-trotters, open to every experience and every encounter. Along a dozen of records, Lo’Jo’s gang, coming from the punk, the jazz, the rock, has explored as many musical lines as continents. The adventurous charm of Lo’Jo relies on the voluptuous heaves of the violins, on the peals of the nimble kora, on the twirling female choirs and on the acrobatic percussions. And Denis’s lyrics, between griots’ fables and humanist aphorisms, mingle French, Spanish, Arabic, Creole, and English. This bewitching and generous cocktail, which has earned them a reputation from Bamako to New-York, to Sydney, Barcelona and Athens, equally seduces Peter Gabriel, Robert Plant, ex-singer of Led Zeppelin, as well as Erik Truffaz or Robert Wyatt.
Nominated for a BBC World Music Award in 2008, winner of the Songline Music Award (best Album) in 2013, LO’JO continue to tour internationally : Shenzhen, Seoul, Ulsan, Montreal, Lafayette, Minneapolis, Austin, Tbilissi to mention the last stops only.
Denis Péan • texts, lead vocals, keyboards
Nadia Nid El Mourid • voice, percussions
Yamina Nid El Mourid • voice, percussions, soprano sax, kamele n’ goni
Alexandre Cochennec • double bass, bass
Richard Bourreau • violin, imzad
Baptiste Brondy • drums
DATES | PLACES | VENUES |
AVAILABLE | FOR BOOKING | |