ABrooks AARTS 310 TP December 6, 2011 Kele A Man Ni: Fostering the Delicate Kora Student-Teacher Relationship “Conceri be sinin. B’i hakili a man di (‘The concert is tomorrow, and today your mind is no good’),” remarked my teacher. I’d never had an instructor as blunt as Babily. Sweat ran from my palms down the cowhide sound table as I struggled to keep good hold of the kora. I’d played “Kele A Man Ni” more times than I could count, but on this particular afternoon it just didn’t sound right. I had warmed up as best as I could before our lesson, so the issue wasn’t in the fingers. Babily and I had spent nearly two hours in the morning tuning the instrument— my instrument— so that certainly was not the problem either. It was pressure. The forthcoming concert was to be the culmination of two months learning to play the kora, a West African harp. I was in Mali on an arts and culture program through my university. I came to the country with the romantic notion of learning from a griot, a traditional and highly respected
Transcript
ABrooks AARTS 310 TPDecember 6, 2011
Kele A Man Ni: Fostering the Delicate Kora Student-Teacher Relationship
“Conceri be sinin. B’i hakili a man di (‘The concert is tomorrow, and today your
mind is no good’),” remarked my teacher. I’d never had an instructor as blunt as Babily.
Sweat ran from my palms down the cowhide sound table as I struggled to keep good hold
of the kora. I’d played “Kele A Man Ni” more times than I could count, but on this
particular afternoon it just didn’t sound right. I had warmed up as best as I could before
our lesson, so the issue wasn’t in the fingers. Babily and I had spent nearly two hours in
the morning tuning the instrument— my instrument— so that certainly was not the
problem either. It was pressure.
The forthcoming concert was to be the culmination of two months learning to
play the kora, a West African harp. I was in Mali on an arts and culture program through
my university. I came to the country with the romantic notion of learning from a griot, a
traditional and highly respected musician. Such would be the most admirable way to
learn, I thought, not realizing the tremendous challenge that awaited me. Our final
requirement was a showing of student work, and all of my peers and their Malian families
would be there. As badly as I wanted to have a stellar performance ready for all of them, I
didn’t. Rather, all I had were pieces of disparate songs— reminders of unsuccessful
apprenticeships with two mentors whose mindsets proved irreconcilable with my own.
Dialy Mady Sissoko
Nearly all the other students had left with their jatigis (hosts) hours ago when
Dialy Mady’s car pulled up to the group house. Having visited Mali years ago, and
arrived in Bamako the previous week, I was somewhat familiar with Malian time and
knew not to let the incident faze me. The tall, forty-something-year-old kora player
emerged from the old Honda, and one of the first things that struck me were his alligator
skin shoes.
“Bonjour, ce va?” he saluted, extending his hand and a warm smile. We were to
spend that Saturday together, as well as the next two, becoming acquainted with one
another. I hopped in the front passenger seat, and we departed for an unknown
destination. Sitting in the back were four kids, of whom he clarified in French that the
three- and five-year-old were his sons, and the other two his nieces. With the little
Bambara that I knew, I replied that I didn’t speak French, but that I understood him. He
laughed.
After a quick visit to his sister’s apartment, we went to one of the many offshoot
alleys of Suguba, Bamako’s big central market. It was two in the afternoon, when the sun
is nearly at its hottest and most Malians take rest, and driving in Suguba was like moving
through hot molasses. We sat in traffic for forty-five minutes before finding the row
Dialy Mady was looking for. He needed a Firewire computer cable for an audio recording
interface. The search brought us to four different small shops, all with a seemingly
random assortment of wires hanging from the wooden rafters supporting their tin roofs,
but none carrying the necessary cable.
Next we went to Bolibana, the neighborhood where Dialy Mady would be
accommodating me. Since he was expecting another kora student from Germany, he had
no room for me in his home. Instead I would be living in a place that he rented from a
friend. A house on the edge of a courtyard shared by several families, it was a lavish
accommodation: a living room equipped with a refrigerator and electric water kettle, a
bedroom with a near-king-size mattress, and an office all to myself. I felt relieved at the
idea of living on my own, mainly for the independence and privacy it would afford me.
But perhaps the best part of the deal was the kora sitting near the bed, available for me to
play anytime I wished.
We then took two other koras being stored in the house out to the car, placed them
in the trunk, and headed to his house for lunch. He lived in a modest white building in
Kolouba that the president had built for his father— a highly respected kora player during
his lifetime— some decades ago. Over a pungent meal of peanut sauce, fish oil, and rice,
which made me even more relieved to not be living in Dialy Mady’s home, I pondered
why we had brought the koras with us. This day may have been my opportunity to finally
lay fingers on the majestic string instrument, and was built up on years of listening to
CDs by its Malian masters Toumani Diabate and Jelimoussa “Ballake” Sissoko. The two
koras remained sitting there in the car, beckoning me, until we headed out on our next
excursion.
Dialy Mady had an appointment with the daughter of a French couple running a
garment-making organization in Bamako. We carried the two koras into their facility,
shared a short greeting, and one of the instruments was placed in the French girl’s hands.
Dialy Mady, taking a seat beside her, held an electronic tuner to the other kora’ sound
hole, plucking, observing the LCD screen, and turning the metal guitar tuners on the
kora’s neck accordingly.
Tuning Technique
The methodical sounding of strings one-by-one into a battery-operated gadget is
obviously not traditional. Nor is the presence of gear-tuners on the neck— prohibitively
expensive hardware the average kora player does not have access to. Rather, tuning is
typically done relative to the instrument itself or other instruments around it, rather than
against set pitches. That the overwhelming majority of kora players keep their
instruments tuned close to the key of F, give or take a half step (Knight, 1971), despite
not having absolute pitches on which to base their tuning, is a curious phenomenon worth
further research.
The strings are either flattened or sharpened by sliding a series of leather rings
(around which they are wound) up and down the kora’s neck. Unique to the kora is the
great physical strength and control required to position its tuning rings, namely those
under tremendous tension of anchoring the bass strings, correctly. My later experiences
with this system would often involve hours of labor, resulting in large blisters on the
thumbs and tunings that only got worse.
Traditional or not, the guitar peg system provided convenience and reliability that
seemed hard to resist for musicians like Dialy Mady who could afford it. Had the cost
difference not been the hundreds of dollars I discovered it to be, I would have much
preferred a kora of modern tuning like the ones sitting in Dialy Mady’s and his French
student’s laps. Five minutes later, the teacher had the two koras’ combined forty-two
strings in perfect temperament, and began the lesson.
The student appeared to be in her late teens, and the way she held the kora— the
posts between her thumbs and forefingers— evidenced that it was her first lesson. Dialy
Mady corrected the position, moving her index fingers so as to place the posts between
them and the middle fingers, giving the four digits full flexibility to play whatever parts
were required of them.
They began with a heptatonic (seven-note) scale, ascending and descending
through all of the kora’s strings. Dialy Mady indicated to her, signaling me as well, that
the layout of strings was such that the four lowest notes lay on the left-hand side and
were to be played by that thumb. From there, notes alternated between the right and left
side, transferring from thumb to forefinger on the left side’s fifth string, and the right’s
third string. The highest three strings were played on the right side.
He then guided her through a bass melody consisting of nine notes, played
entirely with the thumbs. It was a simple but memorable line, and after grappling with it
for fifteen minutes, the French girl could play it in a steady loop. Dialy Mady joined in,
playing the same part with an accompaniment added in the middle range. So the song
continued for several measures before he added greater complexity, a string of lead solo
phrases that danced around the bass and accompaniment with striking grace and
precision. At the back of the house, the girl’s mother turned off the sewing machine,
approached the performance taking place at the center of the living room. The father
came out from his office, leaning on the doorway to observe the music. The place was
dead silent, save for the flourish of lows, mids, and highs coming from student and
teacher’s hands. This was the captivating sound of the kora that had brought me to West
Africa in hope of attaining myself.
On the way back out to the car, Dialy Mady told me we were going to INA
(Institut National des Artes) for my lesson. Riveted by the song I had just heard, I asked
him its name with the hope that he might make it the center of our first lesson as well. I
had no clue of how to ask such a question in Bambara, but willing to embarrass myself to
get an answer, I took a stab at French, “C’est le nom du melodie?” “Bani,” was his one
word answer.
Our first lesson, as well as nearly all subsequent ones, was taken at INA, where
Dialy Mady was something of a pillar in the community. The students and faculty all
gravitated toward him, young men putting down their instruments to shake hands at his
arrival, young ladies greeting him with kisses on each cheek as done in France. There
was a circle of chairs in the courtyard permanently reserved for his posse, who vacated
two seats for us. There, amid a cacophony of tea-taking, humorous antics, guitars,
ngonis1, and saxophones all playing different songs, I was supposed to learn how to play
the kora.
My class was nearly identical to that of the French girl’s, with the exception of a
greater audience in presence, now Malian art students. Surprisingly, the instrument felt
more natural in my hands than how I had imagined. My only prior experience with string
instruments was with the guitar and the sitar, both lutes2. I had worried that changing to a
harp might require a kind of dexterity too different from the one I had acquired, but an
hour playing the kora showed me otherwise. My first experience with my new instructor
gave me great hope for our apprenticeship, and the prospect of eventually gaining even a
small fraction of his musical ability.
One Friday early into my apprenticeship Dialy Mady, he took me to see his group
perform at Lagon (The Lagoon). The venue was a swanky hotel restaurant built around a
large swimming pool, where Africans and Westerners alike could share candlelit tables
and converse nonstop over the background of the band. The lineup comprised of a
jelimuso (female praise singer), a bala fola (player of a West African, xylophone-like
instrument), a percussionist, guitarist, bassist, and Dialy Mady on kora. Over the course
of the night, they presented renditions of everything from staples of West African
repertoire like “Miniamba” and “Allah L’a Ke,” to international hits like “La Bamba.”
Besides the jelimuso, no musician took a clear lead, but Dialy Mady’s place as
elder in the group showed in the calm poise with which he played. While the rest of the
members constantly exchanged glances, gave cues, even vocalized to keep each other on
time or in key, he appeared to be off in his own world, eyes closed for much of the show,
his part anchoring the others. The show went from 9:30 until 1:00 AM, by which point
most of the guests had returned to their accommodations. We all crammed into Dialy
1 Various West African instruments coming in both lute and harp forms2 A category of string instruments that are fretted with one hand to change the pitch
Mady’s sedan, and he had me home by 2:30 in the morning. “The life of a musician,”
remarked my teacher. I failed to grasp at the time the reality contained in such a
statement, nor did I foresee the unfortunate implications it would have for my own
apprenticeship.
Instruction with Dialy Mady
Before I had learned anymore than the mere bass part of “Bani,” Dialy Mady
started teaching me two other songs: “Kayira” and “Jarabi.” I only knew “Kayira” in the
way Toumani Diabate, Mali’s most respected kora player, recorded it on his debut album
of the same name. The bass part that Dialy Mady started me off with bore little
resemblance to that recording (see transcription 2a). “Jarabi”, a love song credited to
jelimuso Fanta Sacko in the sixties (Eyre 196), had an accompaniment pattern that I knew
I had heard on several occasions before (see transcription 3). It was my first time playing
double-stops, and the simple “Jarabi” part had a certain emotional depth lacking in the
accompaniments that I would later flesh out of the other two songs.
Dialy Mady’s teaching style, in one word, was uninvolved. His method was to
demonstrate an accompaniment pattern, first elaborately layered, then stripped down to a
string of single notes with the occasional chord. My melodic comprehension has long
been quite strong, enabling me to whistle back complex tunes after listening to them only
once or twice. In fact, I often did whistle back the melodies he showed me, and if doing it
after sunset, was usually scolded by the others sitting in the circle3.
Hearing the accompaniment pattern clear in my head, all I had to do was translate
it to the instrument. Obviously, it would take much practice and experience before I could
accomplish the second task efficiently, as I still wasn’t comfortably familiar with the
layout of the strings. Dialy Mady caught onto my learning style quickly, though, and
didn’t interject when hearing a wrong note or moment of hesitation. After it was 3 It is believed in Mali that whistling at night attracts wild animals and unwanted strangers
confirmed that I could play the pattern, I was left to play it repeatedly while my instructor
disappeared to tend to other matters. When his band practiced, which happened up to five
nights a week, I could sit off in the courtyard playing a single line of melody for hours
before he would return to show me more.
In his absence, he would sometimes delegate a student to instruct me. One such
student, Drahman, was roughly my age, and played with a level of ease and richness that
I imagine took several years to develop. His lack of teaching experience, nonetheless,
made him as unfit for the job as anyone who has ever jumped into, or in this case, been
thrown into, instructing too soon. He could not break down and dissect the music the way
Dialy Mady could, and instead confronted me with entire accompaniment patterns, dense
with chords, repeating them for ten or twenty minutes at a time as if expecting me to
absorb them by osmosis.
Shortly after transferring the kora to my hands, where a small, monophonic
portion of the melody would be mimicked clumsily at best, Drahman would soon shake
his head, reclaiming the harp at once and again repeating the pattern with no less
complexity. When I could follow his instruction, his unfamiliarity with my ability and
knowledge level had results good (such as learning new variations to songs like “Bani”),
bad (most of the learning was either underwhelming in redundancy or too difficult), and
mixed (more songs were added to my learning repertoire, like “Kangoba” [see
transcription 4]).
After two weeks, my mentor’s unreliability was seriously wearing on me. A
successful, modern, and dare I say Westernized Malian, Dialy Mady was always on the
move. One hour he would be at INA meeting with the administration, the next at a
nondescript dirt road location entertaining his grin (group of men who gather regularly to
converse and drink tea), after that across town to see a veterinarian for his dog, then back
at INA for teaching. He often brought me along on his various appearances and errands,
never with the promise of the two hours instruction required by my program. When I
didn’t tag along, I spent hours at my homestay or INA practicing the small morsels of
music fed to me. At this rate, I feared that that the numerous songs Dialy Mady started
teaching me would remain mere musical fragments, taunting me in my inability to play
them with any depth.
I conveyed my frustrations to the program director Nick Hockin, who responded
by calling a meeting at my homestay between Dialy Mady, our in-country coordinator
Labass, and himself. Before my teacher’s arrival to the meeting, Nick and Labass
discussed with me the possibility of changing teachers if necessary. We all agreed that it
was worth trying to salvage the current apprenticeship; he was a highly capable teacher
with whom I could still make great progress, but only if he made himself more available.
If not, we were willing to take my learning elsewhere. As per Labass’s recommendation
on Malian etiquette regarding confrontations, he and Nick met Dialy Mady outside my
door while I waited anxiously the aftermath.
An hour later, I was called out to three looks of relief. It was a simple
misunderstanding, I thought, and now that it had been resolved, Dialy Mady knew I
needed more instruction. His explanation was that he typically started his students out
slowly, with the intention of instilling in them a hunger for learning. Apparently now that
that phase was over, we could begin to play seriously. They had crafted a schedule in
which I would receive a two-hour lesson every day, five days a week. I was pleased with
the meeting’s outcome, again optimistic about my apprenticeship.
The promises of that meeting were quickly spoiled the next morning when, rather
than the eight o’ clock lesson time set in the schedule, Dialy Mady arrived at my house
nearly at noon. No explanation was given. We went to INA, where in familiar fashion he
left me to recite my music while his band practiced for an hour and a half.
His severe lateness was repeated the following day as well, but slightly redeemed
by our lesson that afternoon. In a rare moment, he brought his kora into my living room
and sat down next to me. This was the closest we would come to a private lesson. He
started playing, and after four notes I immediately recognized the melody. It was the
rendition of an old melody as reworked on Toumani Diabate’s 2008 album The Mande
Variations (see Transcription 5). “Elyne Road,” I said, quoting the title of the track from
the CD. “Mali Sadio,” he replied, informing me of the melody’s original name. I would
have loved to learn a complete rendition of “Mali Sadio.” Even by the standards of kora
repertoire, of which there were innumerable unforgettable works, the song was
distinguished in its beauty.
Had Dialy Mady been willing to put down the myriad other tunes he was teaching
me, and instead focus merely on “Mali Sadio,” my learning would have felt fulfilled.
Unfortunately, it was a dream never realized. The week brought no improvements in my
instructor’s habits, and I declared to the director my decision to change teachers. Nick
and Labass organized another meeting with Dialy Mady, this time at INA, where they
presented the decision as Nick’s own so as to lift the flack off my shoulders. Dialy Mady
expressed displeasure with the verdict, saying it was made unilaterally, but accepted it
nonetheless. I was to move out of my homestay that evening.
The choice to leave my first teacher felt empowering but inevitable. I knew I
would never forgive myself if I had waited for instruction that may never come. Three of
my precious weeks on the other side of the world, a great deal of money, and so much
energy were wasted on a failed experiment in cross-cultural learning. These were the
thoughts that raced through my mind on the taxi ride to my new neighborhood. Directing
my musings away from the past and toward the future, I wondered if my new
apprenticeship would be any better than the last.
I was destined for ATT Bougou, a neighborhood on the other side of the Niger
River in Bamako. Babily Kanouté was the backup instructor my program had provided
me. A former member of the National Instrumental Ensemble, he was a retired griot of
sixty. I took comfort in the hope that he might have far more time for me, and was
excited at the idea of entire mornings, afternoons, or nights spent playing the kora.
Babily Kanouté
It was nearly ten o’ clock when I pulled up to the compound, and Nick and Labass
were already there waiting by their motorcycles. Upon entering the gate we found Babily
seated on a cot at the edge of the courtyard. Several family members, including his wife
Tene and daughters Sow, Sawadou, and Nna, sat in chairs spread around the concrete
space. His son Fassiriman occupied a seat beside him, and plucked a kora casually while
the three of us visitors settled in. My new teacher and I shared the customary greetings,
asking if the other was in good health, the same of the other’s family (despite his being in
my presence for the first time, and mine thousands of miles away). Following some
deliberations with Nick and Labass about weekly payments, lessons, and
accommodation, he gestured for Fassiriman to pass the kora my way.
Not handling well being put on the spot, I clutched the instrument nervously,
gritted my teeth for a moment, and started playing Kalifa. It was one of the more
substantial pieces taught to me by Dialy Mady and his students, and I thought my
combining of accompaniment and lead phrases might impress the old musician. The
playing of a scale before starting would have revealed to me that Babily kept his kora in
the tuning of Silaba (meaning “main road;” different from Dialy Mady’s tuning of Sauta
in that the fourth interval was not raised a half step). Failing to do so, I was surprised at
how different my song suddenly sounded, and stumbled through the impromptu recital.
Babily slapped his knee, calling out, “Jelimory!” The exclamation was his
grandfather’s name, and now apparently mine. He took the kora into his lap and began a
loud, bouncing piece full of layers, strumming (a technique I had not yet seen anywhere
else), melodic vocalizations, and the rhythmic knocking of the hand posts between
phrases. Without a doubt, a special talent was on display before me. “The kind of
instruction you seek, you will find here,” he promised.
The next morning, Nick and I returned to Babily’s house by motorcycle. The two
men exchanged greetings, and upon communicating that I would stay for the day and
leave at night, Nick left me with my new karamogo (teacher). Wasting no time, Babily
called for Sawadou to bring a sitting mat and kora out into the courtyard. I settled into
cross-legged position while the instructor tuned his instrument.
Tuning Technique, Revisited
A traditionalist without the frills of guitar pegs or electronic tuning devices,
Babily was unhesitating in his handling of the kora neck’s rings. His approach involved
playing everything from scales, short melodies, and improvised phrases in two different
octaves simultaneously. If two counterpart notes were not in tune, he either sharpened or
flattened one to make them match. Oddly, the two strings in question were never gauged
against the rest, and I found that he sharpened the flat string almost every time. It was an
interesting method of tuning, rather crude to my partially-informed perspective, but
usually effective enough to get the instrument’s pitch to an acceptable uniformity in
under twenty minutes.
Anytime I had the kora in my possession and reached to adjust a tuning ring,
Babily quickly snatched it and did it himself. It wasn’t until two months later when I
purchased my own instrument that he allowed me to partake in the process. On the third
day with the new kora, I was having an especially hard time tuning. I found that with
certain strings needing to be sharpened, no matter how far up I moved the tuning ring
(sometimes overcompensating a whole tone in preparation for it to slide back down) or
tried to wiggle it into place, it simply returned to its previous position. Babily observed
my struggle with the uncooperative leather implements and had the same result when he
tried moving them. An expression came over his face, seemingly taking offense with the
kora itself, and he turned it around so as to bring the tuning rings to his lips. What ensued
next was beyond my imagination: the sixty-year-old griot was licking the brand new
instrument’s neck, drooling generous amounts of saliva into the rings’ woven pockets.
Upon seeing the wonders that such a trick did— for the rings did actually stayed in place
following his spit treatment— I only regretted that I might never bring myself to do the
same, lest I welcome my teacher’s oral bacteria as my own.
Our First Lesson
Once the kora was in tune, Babily spent our first lesson teaching me the bare
basics of the accompaniment to a song with an unknown title. The six-note kumbenba (as
Babily called the accompaniment), while not particularly memorable, was easy enough to
learn in fifteen minutes, and I could play it in decent, steady repetition by the end of the
class. “Dooni dooni (Little by little),” crooned my new teacher, placing one hand on my
arm to stop the playing, and retrieving the kora with the other. Those two words,
practically a defining mantra for pace of life among Malians, set the tone for how all of
my instruction under Babily would proceed.
When Nick returned in the late afternoon, he found my new mentor and I seated
beneath a tree by the side of the road. Babily had me play what I had learned that day,
explaining to my program director that the song was called “Kele A Man Ni” (see
Transcriptions 6a-e). Gesturing as if to jab at an unseen foe, and then wagging his finger,
he visually translated the name to mean “War is Bad.” He played a far more complex
version, again employing the same flashy techniques that he had demonstrated the night
before.
A Comparison of Playing Styles
That first afternoon, as with the night before, the difference in Babily’s playing
style from those of other kora folas I listened to was immediately apparent. His
syncopated, legato rhythms and full-bodied melodies (attributable to the even playing of
strings all across the bridge, and major key phrasing), contrasted sharply against those of
Dialy Mady, Ballake Sissoko, and Toumani Diabate, whose rhythms tended to be
staccato, and whose minor key melodies contained distinct counterpoint (i.e. the bass,
accompaniment, and lead parts were more clearly isolated across the different registers).
Equipped with a fair, though admittedly not too diverse, amount of listening
exposure to the kora, my idea of jeli foli (the playing of instruments done exclusively by
griots) was more strongly reaffirmed by the latter three mentioned musicians than the
former. Before coming to Mali, I had associated griots with a creative form both refined
and sophisticated, intended only for histories and persons deserving their praise; classical,
for lack of knowledge of local terminology. In Babily’s playing I heard boisterous
qualities that I would assume more likely developed in a village setting— and I might
contrarily refer to as folk music— than in the “Manding court,” as international music
journalist Banning Eyre has written (125). My assumption may have proven to be
partially true, as when I asked Babily to describe the distinctive playing style from Kita
(where he first learned kora), he referred to the very dichotomy between rural and urban
foli.
It was early independence. With the socialist regime at that time, there were
public works. We had different ways to make music in the countryside… When I moved to
Bamako, it was really different from the rural area, because if you were making music (in
the city), you had to keep it less loud (than in the countryside) (Kanouté, 2011).
It should be noted that Toumani Diabate’s father Sidiki also came from Kita.
Indeed, he was largely responsible for establishing a reputation for Kita, and later
Bamako, as hubs of entry for kora playing— previously and predominantly limited to
Guinea Bissau, Senegal, and The Gambia— into Mali (Charry, 2000). Examination of
two of his old albums, Cora de Mali and L’ Histoire de Cora, confirms a playing style
quite similar to Babily Kanoute’s.
Presumably, Babily acquired his technique during early lessons with Sidiki
Diabate. Toumani, on the other hand, did not learn from his father face-to-face, but rather
through repeated listening to his recordings. Perhaps if not for the fadenya (typically used
to describe the divisive relationship among children of the same father but different
mothers; in this case describing rivalry between father and son) that ruled Sidiki and
Toumani’s relationship, the later would have developed a sound not too different from his
father’s. Like Dialy Mady and Ballake Sissoko, he was a musician of a different
generation, freeing themselves from the bounds of tradition to pursue experimentation.
The forging factor of such fundamentally different playing styles, therefore, expands
beyond mere lineage or denomination of origin, to include generational differences. More
than “Kita style,” perhaps it would be fitting to call it “old style” (see Appendix A for a
brief history of Babily Kanoute’s kora learning and career).
While a kora player of a different generation, Babily was not entirely unfamiliar
with the life of a modern musician. His work with the National Ensemble took him on
tour and to festivals all over the world. Many quiet moments between he and I were
broken by his sudden nostalgic recollection of some major international city or other.
“Beijing, ah, Beijing!” he would say, in part boasting, in part checking to see if I had
gone there myself. “Moscow… Pyongyang, Korea… Madrid… Havanna… New
Orleans… Miami…” his list went on and on. So absorbed he seemed in his own ability,
accomplishments, and griot status at times that I felt I couldn’t approach him. I could
accept the role of the fearful student to a certain degree, but what would I do if the
teaching was not to my content?
Instruction with Babily
We spent our week developing those few notes of “Kele A Man Ni” into three
simple variations. Each variation differed melodically from the other by little more than a
note or two, and despite knowing a seemingly endless number of rhythmic variations,
Babily never taught me anything besides the ones landing, uninterestingly, on the straight
beat.
When on day eight he taught me two buramabolis (fast, descending solo phrases),
they came as a relief from the mundane “dooni dooni” learning style he so strongly
advocated. The two-second runs were deceptively difficult, as their notes weren’t played
in even meter. Rather, strong ornamenting of the phrase delivered it in bursts of three
notes, separated by split-second rests that could change in length according to the
player’s preference. Either because of my limited language or his unwillingness to do so,
requests for Babily to slow them down for me to dissect the timing went unfulfilled. Only
rarely would he entertain my requests, whether they were to play a part more slowly,
clarify whether two notes should be played as a chord or a grace note (sounded
simultaneously, or staggered minimally so as to sound as an embellishment,
respectively), or teach me a new part when I tired of playing the same ones repeatedly.
Babily was a devout Muslim, and commitments to prayer and the local mosque
took up a surprising amount of his time. While he tended to these commitments,
Fassiriman and I often played kora together. Fassiriman’s company was of good relief
when his father’s lessons dissatisfied me, not only because he would help break down
buramabolis, but also because he taught me new material. With him I started learning the
song “Mansani Cisse,” a song about a wealthy man from Guinea whose fate remained
debated amongst griots (see transcriptions 7a-e).
The get-togethers were more exchanges than lessons, as I found that I had nearly
as much to share with Fassiriman as he did with me. I taught him the accompaniment to
Jarabi and Kalefa, and he taught me the solo phrases to Bani (see Transcriptions 1c-e)
and another song called “Jeli Foli.” Still, he had obligations as well, and his studies and
housework often meant directing me back to Babily when I wanted to play. Oddly, when
discovering that I could play a small part of “Mansani Cisse,” Babily scrapped the
version Fassiriman had taught me and started showing me a new one. Our core learning
repertoire came to revolve around three songs: “Kele A Man Ni,” “Bani,” and “Mansani
Cisse.”
Two weeks into the apprenticeship, I became frustrated with the slow pace of
learning. Babily seemed overly fixated on perfecting my playing technique. I had started
incorporating muting— what my teacher referred to as k’i bulu di ga ka— into the
accompaniment of “Kele A Man Ni” the week prior, and couldn’t quite perform it to his
satisfaction. The sounding of excess, adjacent strings— consequent of following through
too far when playing chords—also clearly displeased him.
He never failed to comment on these shortcomings, and such discipline set the
agenda for most of our lessons. I must have played that two-measure accompaniment
thousands of times under his attentive ears, each time being met either with a resounding
“Aha!” when successful, or a stifling “Nah ah” when flubbed. Interestingly, I have
observed a clear correlation between playing technique (and perhaps even ability) and
finger size. Both Babily and Dialy Mady have large hands, which necessitate the
downward curling of the fingers to hold the hand posts and play the strings comfortably.
This hand posture utilizes more of a stroking motion than a plucking one, and puts more
of the digit’s surface area in contact with the string. Thus, muting takes no additional
effort— other than removing the finger when not desired— for players like my
instructors. Conversely, Fassiriman and I, both with small hands, had to place the
fingertip or side back on the string immediately after plucking to get the same effect.
I grew resentful of Babily’s teaching style, because it demanded muscle memory
that I simply didn’t have time to acquire. Our valuable lesson time would have been far
more productively spent, I thought, on developing the songs into cohesive pieces. Even if
not mastered before leaving, I would at least have knowledge of the songs as a foundation
to build on through months or years of repetition back in my home country. After all, I
could practice on my own without Babily incessantly watching over my shoulder, but
with no certainty would I be able to find someone in the US who could teach me the same
music.
As with Dialy Mady, I requested twice that Labass have a meeting with my
current karamogo. My biggest complaint was that despite numerous personal appeals,
Babily would not show me new parts to songs. I had built a musical vocabulary on each
piece that amounted to three or four measures, but never more.
In the first meeting, he explained that he had originally intended to focus only on
“Kele a Man Ni,” as he believed it was an avenue, melodically and technically, to all
other kora songs. He claimed that I contradicted his plan when I first arrived to ATT
Bougou with different renditions of songs, some not even part of his own repertoire, and
that I insisted on playing them too much. If I would just trust his plan, he guaranteed I
would be happy with the lessons. I felt that he had twisted the truth, failing to recognize
my patience and commitment to his incremental instruction. Rarely would I play other
songs, and when I did, I reserved them for non-lesson time with Fassiriman because of
the annoyance I thought they might cause Babily. “These griots can be so hard to talk to,”
remarked Labass after the meeting, “you can never contradict their words, and yet they
contradict their own words. One day they will tell you something, and the next something
entirely different.” My apprenticeship was turning out to be less of a kora learning
experience, and more of a lesson in how difficult this class of musicians could be.
When two more weeks passed with little more than a variation or two added to
my playing, I called the second meeting. Babily was even more defensive this time,
saying that my dissatisfactions unfounded. He contended that I had learned plenty under
his instruction, and that I would have to prove mastery of the material before I could
move on. Much to my discomfort, he had his wife bring out the kora halfway into the
meeting, plopped it down in front of me. “Can you play what he taught you without
making a single mistake?” translated Labass. I entertained the challenge, and began with
a simple octave exercise. “Who taught you that exercise?” asked Babily, a pointed
rhetorical question. I moved into song, and he called out all the parts I was playing, “One
variation… two variations… three solo phrases.” He was trying to spin the situation to
make me look ungrateful. “You will not find instruction like mine anywhere else in
Bamako. I have no faster method of teaching you than the one I am already using,” were
his closing remarks. Labass and I shared defeated glances, and I returned to my lessons.
The situation worsened as the end of the program neared. With the final showing
a week away, Babily tolerated little playing other than “Kele A Man Ni” and “Mansani
Cisse,” the two songs that Fassiriman and I were to perform. His normal discipline turned
to insult, usually aimed toward his son when errors were made, “Fassiriman’s mind is no
good. He can’t learn anything well.” When it became intolerable, sometimes I would
retort, “You told me that I have to learn little by little. I make mistakes. Does that make
me stupid, too?” “Oh, but you’ve only been learning for two months! Fassiriman has
been learning for years. His mind is no good.”
“Kele a man ni” means “war is bad” in Bambara. As I later learned, its words
were not a mere denunciation of war, but in fact acknowledgement of war’s necessity.
“Without war, the winner can never be known,” went one of the lines. My effort to play
the kora, a West African harp, was a two-month war: a war with clashing cultures, with
old rigid mindsets, and with strange and unconquerable music. It both aligned and pinned
me against two different mentors, and through learning with them, gave me a firsthand
perspective on the intricacies of Mali’s social and artistic griot class. I suppose if I was
victorious on any one front, it was not surrendering. When I return to the United States, I
intend to continue learning kora. Perhaps there I will find the instruction I am looking for.
Works Cited
Charry, E. (2000). Mande Music. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Eyre, B. (2000). In Griot Time. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Kanouté, B. (2011, December 3). Interview with Babily Kanouté. (A. Brooks, Interviewer, & L. Gnono, Translator)
Knight, R. (1971). Towards a Notation and Tablature for the Kora and Its Application to Other Instruments. African Music , 5 (1), pp. 23-36.
Appendix A: A Brief History of Babily Kanouté’s Kora Learning and Career
Babily began learning kora in 1965 at the age of fourteen. The “public works” he
refers to were the two years of fieldwork mandatory for all Malians under Modibo
Keita’s Republic. He remained in his village, Budofo (now a part of the town of Kita),
until 1968, constantly torn between the demands of farm work and requests to perform
music at events and receptions in town. The departure from his family and village in 1969
to Bamako was an attempt to leave such conflicted obligations behind and fully take up
the life of a musician.
The attempt proved successful, and in 1970 Babily joined Les Ambassadeurs, an
orchestre (the word used commonly for band) widely recognized as pioneering modern
Malian music. With that band he toured extensively throughout West Africa and earned a
reputation as one of the most talented young kora players. His history also places himself
in the outer circle of the Rail Band during the first half of that decade, which counted
contemporary legends like singer Salif Keita and guitarist Djelimady Tounkara among its
ranks.
When Moussa Traoré took power in the mid 1970’s, his regime disbanded the
Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali briefly before reinstating it by way of
countrywide auditions. Babily pursued a seat in the Ensemble during the first wave of
auditions, but speculates that someone threatened the panel with power objects (magical
fetishes believed to be capable of cursing individuals), resulting in the selection of older
kora players over himself. His second bid to join the National Ensemble in 1978 was
successful, however, and would become nearly a thirty-year career.
