Dan Gna

EDITORIAL REVIEWS .COM Les Go (roughly, "the Girlfriends," in the urban sense) consist of three young female singer-dancers of West African Manding ancestry. The group began as an offshoot of a music and drama troupe called L'Ensemble Koteba, which is based in the cosmopolitan city of Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire. The liner notes refer to this album as "world pop with no apology," and it is an indictment of the rigidly exclusionary state of the world-music market that such a disclaimer is even necessary. The trio sings closely harmonized, tightly crafted commercial singles that owe as much to Michael Jackson (the album was produced by Quincy Jones alum Bruce Swedien) as it does to the jelis (griots), the Caribbean, and the Paris melting pot. There is a good-humored, sweetly naive girl-group sexiness and unjaded sophistication to Les Go's delivery that is bound to please, if trad fanciers can get past the percolating R&B bass lines, synth patches, and drum machines lurking amid the koras and djembes. A Manding-language cover of the Seals & Crofts hit "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" will provoke a lot of discussion, but it is both more charming and not nearly as funny as expected. --Christina Roden

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