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Album review
Salif Keïta
Back to Normal
Paris
08/08/2003 -
RFI : With your previous album Papa , in 1999, you demanded the right to rock. This time, you return to a concept which is calmer, bare and acoustic.
Salif Keita : I like being free, I want to be able to do everything, putting things in comparments doesn't interest me. When I mix music from home with that from the Occident, it's like putting myself to the test each time. But I can also imagine something quite pure like the song Iniagig which I did for the soundtrack L'Enfant Lion and which is here on this album .
On Moffou , you stayed with a rather medimum register as far as the vocals are concerned. Do you have the feeling that your voice has changed over the years?
It's true that I'm getting older like everyone else. Age matters. But getting old doesn't scare me. Thanks to life's experiences I have become wiser. Before I was very "revolutionary", violent in my behaviour. Now, I take things more easily. I stand back, I analyze. However, if I had to, I would still be capable of writing a song like Nou pas bouger.
Your songs are sometimes a way for you to express your opinion, to react to current events or social problems (Nou pas bouger, about deportation is the most famous example). Do you consider that an artist, a public figure has to have an opinion on everything?
I reserve the right not to have an opinion on everything but I am always attentive to what's going on around me. Apparently 60 American intellectuals recently declared, in a press release about the military operations in Afghanistan, that there was such a thing as legitimate wars. How can you justify something that destroys people's lives? I will never find the slightest justification for war, whatever type.
This is t he first time that one of your albums contains so many positive messages.
Absolutely, but you cannot always say sad things. You have to make people dream and give them a love for life. I think that this is absolutely essential.
Through Moffou, you want to give a positive image of Africa. It's not the first time. You already did it for example in the song Africa , on the album Folon. The Past .
There isn't only misery and sickness in Africa. In Europe, some say : "it's a continent where everything is going badly" and yet, they encourage us to return. It's paradoxal, isn't it? If Africans must return to Africa, you might as well make them love their country. I rebel against the sordid image that is too often presented of our home. I myself return there more and more often. I never fully move back there because I have my family here in France where I had children, little French kids who love their native land. Since last year, I have had a club in Bamako which seats 150-200 people. It is located in the Kalaban quarter, in the east of the city and bears the name of my new album, Moffou . There are also eleven bedrooms where the musicians can sleep becase it is pretty far out of town. We're going to put a recording studio there which should be operational at the end of May. In fact, we took apart the equipment from the studio that I had previously set up elsewhere to install it in Moffou. This name, Moffou, is also the name of an instrument on the way to becoming extinct at home, a flute, made with the stem of millet hollowed out with one hole made in it. I used it when I was a kid in the fields. We used it to chase the birds away from the harvests.
To give the name of this forgotten instrument to your album, is it also a way of making reference to the past?
It is always important to look backwards to go forwards. Tradition is very important, but but you must know how to separate the good from the bad. Not everything is worth keeping. For example, to say that the nobility doesn't have the right to sing (Salif Keita is a descendant of Sundjata Keita, the founder of the Mandingue empire in 1240. According to tradition, being a descendent of nobility he doesn't have the right to touch music, a domaine reserved for the griots, editor's note).
What is your opinion on excision and polygamy which are among the controversial aspects of tradition?
I condemn excision. To want to lessen a woman's feeling of sensations is totally selfish. As for polygamy, here I will be more nanced because in fact, how many married men have mistresses on the side? Might as well make them "official" like that things are clearer.
You are loyal to the Guinean guitarist Kanté Manfila who did most of the arrangements on Moffou . The story of your friendship goes way back because your paths first crossed the first at the beginning of the Seventies in the Rail Band of the resaurant at the Bamako train station.
He's my brother. We are inseparable, I love him a lot. There have never been any problems between us, even if we sometimes we go a long time without seeing each other. His plucking is very delicate, sensitive and sentimental
Many African singers and musicians get their inspiration from tradition. Certain artists have often been reproached for having claimed authorship of words or melodies taken from this heritage. Has this criticism already been made about you?
No, but we musn't forget that culture is like blood. You are born in it so it circulates in your head, it takes you over. You cannot distance yourself from the culture and folklore of your homeland. It's anchored to your insides. Taking elements from tradtion to transpose them directly on a record, that has happend to us, but it is not the right way of doing things. I myself have done bits that were traditional in their own right but I transformed them.
Like Mandjou for example, your favourite song recorded at the end of the Seventies? A composition which would later raise controversy, because you had dedicated it to Sékou Touré; the first president of the Republic of Guinea, who had rather totalitarian ways.
In the begining, it was only three sentences taken from tradition that I reworked. If I cited Sékou Tourés name in these words, it seemed completely justified because he is someone- the only one at the time- who helped me, gave a life. He did a lot for musicians. He adored art and placed major importance on it.
What are the strong points of Mali today ?
Above all, democracy. One musn't try to upset that. Fundamentalism mustn't enter our country. Yet, there is a danger of that. I am very afraid of those who criticize you, who loath you when you don't pray. I am Muslim, I want to pray to God but when I feel like it, when I am ready to present myself before him and not to be obliged to do it systematically, at fixed times of the day.
Salif Keïta Moffou (Universal Music Jazz)
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