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Album review
Djeli Moussa Diawara
Sini
Paris
01/02/2007 -
In a family like Djeli Moussa Diawara’s, music is handed down through the generations like a burning torch. Born in Kankan, he has never tried to escape his poetic destiny as a griot, even if it was the years spent as an entertainer in Abidjan that sparked him to go and explore the world of music. His career is stamped with it, both the personal albums and those with the Kora Jazz Trio, with whom he has had such success over the last three years.
After his flirtation with flamenco guitars on Flamenkora, and Hawaiian cords on Ocean Blues, this is a whole new musical marriage. It is not until a full ten minutes into the album, at the start of the third track, Sini, that you leave Mandinka territory. The décor suddenly changes, a computerized rhythm takes over and the bass becomes more present. A Nyan Don and Doumanie go one step further. The beat, although danceable, becomes artificial, and the keyboard sounds are more facile than truly useful.
Convinced that what pleases in Europe is not necessarily what pleases in Africa, the singer and kora-player reveals that he wrote the music primarily for an African audience. "If you don’t want them to forget you, you need to do what they like", he says, noting that using dance rhythm in this type of music is nothing new. His famous half-brother, Mory Kanté, was in fact one of the first to do so in Yeke Yeke in the mid-1980s.
If some of Djeli Moussa’s pieces have been sacrificed in the name of pragmatism, luckily almost two-thirds of the album convey the same agreeable traditional flavour as the first two songs. The sloth-like solemnity of Mariam sits in contrast with the light fluidity of Netigui: proof enough that their Guinean author likes playing on the contrasts.
Bertrand Lavaine
Translation : Anne-Marie Harper
17/05/2000 -
