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ONe NIgHT IN BAMAkO / THe MAgIC Of MAlI
“…genius, a living proof that the blues comes from the region of Segu.” – taj mahal on Bassekou kouyate
Bassekou Kouyate
This performance of one Night in Bamako/magic of mali is made possible, in part, by performance benefactor
Fatoumata Diawara
34 carolinaperformingarts .org
fatoumata Diawara, vocalsperpetuating mali’s rich musical tradition, fatoumata diawara presents a joyous mix of the vibrant and understated, combining songs about love, politics and empowerment with arresting melodies soaring over intricate guitar and drum arrangements. inspired by Wassoulou tradition, jazz and blues, she has created her own unique contemporary folk sound with a distinctly african spin on the concept of the female singer-songwriter.
at the center of the music is diawara’s warm, affecting voice, spare, rhythmical guitar playing and gorgeously melodic songs that draw powerfully on her own often troubled experience. Born in côte d’ivoire, raised in mali and now based in paris, diawara’s life covers the gamut of contemporary african experience, fighting parental opposition to her artistic ambitions and the cultural prejudice faced by women throughout africa, winning success as an actress in film and theater, and landing in the medium she was always destined to make her own: music.
damon albarn, toumani diabaté, herbie hancock and Led Zeppelin’s John paul Jones are just a few of the major players who have fallen for diawara’s effortless musical charm. her presence has illuminated shows in europe by africa express, afrocubism and hancock’s Imagine project. her 2012 Nonesuch debut Fatou is almost entirely her own work: compositions and arrangements, backing vocals and percussion. it breathes with the natural warmth, confidence and spontaneity that are the essence of diawara herself.
february 14, 2014fri8:00 Pm
biographies
many people know that Bamako, the capital of mali, perches on the banks of the niger river. What most people do not realize is that this sprawling riverbank city is also defined by its hills.
People joke that these two hills are known as “the hill of power” (on which sits the Presidential Palace, as well as a number of government ministries) and “the hill of knowledge” (on which sits the
university). Between power and knowledge resides the heart of the city, and it is in the heart where we find the music.
neither fatoumata Diawara nor Bassekou Kouyate are originally from Bamako, but the heart of Bamako is where their paths intersect.
emily burrill on one Night in Bamako
One Night In Bamako/Magic of Mali brings together two musicians who have a firm grasp of the traditional roots of their music, but who have made the music they play their own.
arguably, the ancient ngoni is now synonymous with Bassekou Kouyate, whose expertise has introduced the instrument to the world music community. fatoumata Diawara’s musical stylings are recognizably “Wassoulou sound,” a distinctive and well-established musical genre from southern mali. But Diawara’s lyrical topics and composition are more contemporary folk, and quirky at that – her music is at once ultra-modern and steeped in tradition. Hearing Bassekou Kouyate & ngoni Ba and fatoumata Diawara perform at memorial Hall assures us that Bamako’s heart beats long and strong.
Emily burrill is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC.
Program to be announced from the stage.
fatoumata diawara, vocalsBassekou kouyate, ngoni
Bassekou Kouyate, ngonivirtuoso picker, musical visionary and one of africa’s greatest instrumentalists, Bassekou kouyate blurs the lines between West african and american roots music. his instrument, the ngoni, is an ancient traditional “spike lute” – an ancestor of the banjo, sharing its taut-skinned drum body, percussive attack and varied picking techniques. Since 2005, Bassekou has led Ngoni Ba, the first-ever group built around not one but four ngonis.
the ngoni is the key instrument of the griot culture. unlike the kora, whose history goes back only a few hundred years, the ngoni has been the main instrument in griot storytelling going back to the 13th century, to the days of Soundiata keita, founder of the mali empire. from the region of Ségou, Bassekou’s repertoire is Bambara music, pentatonic in nature and as close to the blues as you can get in africa.
over the years, Bassekou has collaborated with many musicians from his malian homeland and elsewhere. he was one of the key musicians on ali farka touré’s posthumous album release Savane, having toured the world with touré to great acclaim as the band’s solo ngoni player. he has played in the Symmetric trio alongside toumani diabaté (kora) and kélétigui diabaté (balafon) and was a part of the taj mahal/toumani diabaté Kulanjan project. he features prominently on Youssou N’dour’s Rokku Mi Rokka and dee dee Bridgwater’s Red Earth and has toured with Béla fleck. his most recent album is Jama Ko (2013) with Ngoni Ba.
ngoni Basekou kouyate, lead ngoni aminata sacko, lead vocalsMoctar kouyate, calabashMamadou kouyate, ngoni bassMahamadou tounkara, percussionabou sissoko, ngoni medium Moustafa kouyate, ngoni ba
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music
despite
holds life
political
unrest
i n M a l i ,
together ≤Mali
by Chris Vitiello
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Sidi Touré, a Malian griot, offered that African proverb on Public Radio
International’s “The World” recently to explain the current political climate in
his country, which has been in the news during the last year with a military
coup, a nomadic rebellion and militant Islamic extremists in the north that
French forces have helped stifle.
But the proverb also explains the importance of music to Africans,
particularly as it relates to politics. A griot’s song is news and cultural
communication. The talking that political leaders do trends
toward the noise of the flock.
≤MaliWhen a flock of birds
flies overhead, it’s impossible to hear the
beauty of any particular bird’s song in the din.
throughout 2013 Western heads have shaken grimly reading about the conflict beneath some variation of the headline “islamic militants have banned music in mali.” perhaps it’s an unsurprising hazard of a “news ticker” information culture that these headlines
fall somewhere between oversimplification and inaccuracy. the truth lag in mali is also symptomatic of the complex and shifting conflict
zones and factions that spawned the stories in the first place.
When ngoni master Bassekou kouyate and vocalist fatoumata diawara, two of mali’s greatest contemporary musical talents,
visit chapel hill in february for a concert called One Night in Bamako/The Magic of Mali, they represent a national musical
scene as complex, shifting and rich as any in the world. and while music hasn’t been banned in mali as exactly as the headlines imply, the most recent outbreak of civil unrest has been more
than just another squawking bird in a crowded sky. ≥
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musici n M a l i continuedNorthern africa, like all postcolonial regions, presents a sociopolitical map with few borders, factions, governments or authorities recognized as legitimate by everyone. it’s difficult for Westerners to anticipate or even report upon the domino effect set off by any political change in the region. Some lines on the map can suddenly go dark, and new or old lines can light up. Some national or tribal narrative from decades or centuries ago can suddenly pick up again in the present day.
mali is a diverse, huge country – nearly twice the area of texas – stretching from Saharan sands in the north through a belt of the Sahel savannah with its jewel city of timbuktu, into the tropical south where the Niger river runs through the capital of Bamako. mali is landlocked, but borders the coastal countries of Senegal and guinea to the west.
tuareg nomads inhabit central and northern mali, as well as Saharan and sub- Saharan areas of algeria, Libya, Niger and Burkina faso, all of whose national borders mean little to the tuareg. But the national politics mean a lot. While tuareg people flee the conflicts that blow in with democratic winds, tuareg mercenaries can profit from them.
mali fell quickly into conflict in early 2012. distracted by a tuareg nationalist uprising in the north, the democratic government fell to a military coup in march, drawing the ire of the international community as
well as sanctions and an embargo by the economic community of West african States. as the tuareg declared northern mali the autonomous state of azawad, the islamic extremist groups (including al-Qaeda) that had helped them rebel turned upon them, seeing an opportunity to seize power in the region.
Quickly, throughout northern mali, music clubs were closed and local festivals including the annual festival of the desert were canceled in the name of sharia law. Some musicians had their instruments destroyed and stories of physical harm and imprisonment surfaced. Some musicians left the country or fled south to Bamako. But some less stringent restrictions were even in place in the capital city.
malian musicians, even in the Saharan landscape in the north, are world-renowned and numerous. kouyate has achieved international fame as the global representative of the ngoni, an ancient stringed instrument from which the banjo might have evolved. diawara’s blend of traditional music with blues and jazz elements has found an audience in europe and across the atlantic. add in kora virtouso toumani diabaté, sensational guitarist ali farka touré, an ipod-ful of afro-pop and hip-hop artists, as well as the famed tuareg band tinariwen, and you have not just a lot of great tunes but a cultural and economic sector rivaling or exceeding other malian industries and exports.
Sharia law is not explicit on the subject of music. an extreme interpretation considers music a distraction from devotion. But commentators have speculated that it’s just as likely that the islamists intended to sabotage the malian economy or demoralize the tuareg people.
at the height of the instability, the international press began writing those oversimplifying headlines. kouyate, in a January 2013 article in The Guardian, unpacked the difference between “music is banned” and “music is effectively banned,” describing how the military’s safety concerns are what led to club closings and concert cancellations in the relatively stable capital.
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The government is nerVous & afraid
of terrorist attacks on public gatherings…
they are asking everyone to wait
until the situation in the north
has calmed down.
“the government is nervous and afraid of terrorist attacks on public gatherings,” he told a reporter. “they are asking everyone to wait until the situation in the north has calmed down.”
as 2012 drew to a close, french and malian forces teamed up to quell the islamists in the north, and a democratic government was re-established. diawara quickly assembled a large, tuareg-heavy cast of musicians and singers to record a new song and video entitled “peace.” Something of a malian equivalent to “We are the World,” the song expresses a preference for a unified mali over an azawad separatist state.
the tuareg presence in the song’s cast is significant. musicians can stand together and speak of peace in a way that no politician or government can. “the political situation is bad so it's time for the musicians to come together,” diawara said of the song.
Where kouyate explains the effect that temporary precautionary restrictions had on the infrastructure of the malian music scene, Bouna Ndiaye, who hosts the syndicated radio program “Bonjour africa” on WNcu, notes the irrepressibility of music in mali – which, depending upon your beliefs, can be both a uniting joy and a threat.
Ndiaye rattles off what’s forbidden under sharia law: alcohol consumption, drug usage, prostitution. extremists see these behaviors as coming part and parcel with secular music, he says. they’re aiming at these behaviors with their effective ban – not the music itself. it’s comparable to Baptist ministers in the united States banning dancing or certain kinds of music in their communities to keep young people from committing peripheral sins.
religious music, on the other hand, would not be banned, a point that Ndiaye feels has been consistently neglected by Western journalists covering the story. as an example of this blind spot, he remembers a post on the pri facebook page linking to what they claimed was a banned song.
“there’s no way any kind of islamist would object to that song because that song praised muhammad. that’s just bad reporting,” he notes, also taking pains to differentiate Bamako, where on a recent visit he found music pretty much live and well, from the north.
“i went to Bamako to interview musicians. i talked with one man until five o’clock and then he got up and said ‘oh, i have to go and play.’”
You couldn’t possibly stop people from playing and listening to music, Ndiaye says, because that would be like stopping people from living. if the government closes the clubs, the musicians will find a backyard to play in. if extremists cancel the legendary festival in the desert, it’s possible that the audiences reassemble elsewhere for an impromptu show.
malian coherence, at this moment, is still debatable. there are no facts so much as there are opinions about the stability of
its government. Nonetheless, its regions have a tight causal relationship. When leadership changes in Bamako, the north destabilizes. if rebels rise up in the north, restrictions are imposed in the capital. Lacking a sustained body politic, mali is really united through its music. the musicians are the only birds, right now, that can break away from the flock. •
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