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Habib Koité’s new album Afriki
The Malian star records on the road
Paris
20/09/2007 -
Habib Koité admits that for the past few years he has been a man walking around "with a weight on my shoulders." It seems that coming up with a follow-up to Baro, his last album released in 2001, was no simple affair. "Look at my hair," he laughs, "I’ve gone white over this!" "I have to say," he adds, "I was actually pretty surprised when I was asked to do a new album. Time seems to have flown by so quickly since the last one!"
Of all the Malian artists working on the current scene, Habib Koité is probably one of the most sought-after performers on the international live circuit. Meanwhile, besides assuring a hectic tour schedule abroad, accompanied by his backing band Bamada, the Malian singer has put much of his time and energy into launching innovative African festivals such as Acoustic Africa and Desert Blues. No wonder he appears to have lost all sense of time!
The problem, Koité admits, came in balancing his professional commitments with the creative headspace required to start experimenting with ideas for a new album. "When I’m out on the road touring so much," he says, "I’m never sure whether I should try and work on new songs on the road or wait till I get home. But as I don’t really get home much these days, if I relied on that approach I’d be stuffed!" Koité says he did try and schedule a number of breaks into his packed timetable, but either the breaks failed to materialise or when they did happen he failed to achieve as much as he wanted. Another problem was that when Koité got home to Bamako, "given the modest level of fame I’ve achieved", the singer found himself bombarded with all kinds of requests and solicitations. The opportunities for locking himself away and concentrating on new material were few and far between.
Self-discipline
Koité soon realised he would need to institute a routine of iron discipline – something he had had no notion of up until this point – if he wanted to take advantage of his rare moments of free time. This new routine completely changed his life on tour. "The first thing I’d do when I got to my hotel room," he says, "was whip out my computer, plug it in, then get out my guitar and I was ready to roll! I didn’t allow myself to do anything before that. My days of flopping down on the hotel bed and automatically turning on the TV were over!" Using computer software, which he has only just got the hang of, Koité turned his hotel room into a miniature studio, recording himself as he went along, then listening and re-listening to what he had done. "It can be a pretty long drawn-out process battling me, myself and I," he admits, "I generally end up throwing a lot of stuff in the bin, even though the day before I’d thought it was really good."
Instead of simply sitting down and letting ideas come naturally, Koité admits that it was more a case of forcing himself to dig deep down inside and push them to the surface. Never before in his career, he says, had he been so conscious of being an all-round singer, songwriter and composer. After spending a week in Germany at the end of 2006 working with a fellow Malian who helped him capture his ideas in their rawest state, Koité finally wended his way back to the studio - or rather several studios, booked along the way to fit in with his intercontinental schedule. After making a few initial recordings in Belgium, Koité flew home to work in Mali and then headed out to the U.S. to work in a studio in a tiny village in Vermont, "an incredibly beautiful place where you can watch the deer come out at night."
In order to pull his disparate recordings made in different places and different time zones into a cohesive whole, Koité came up with the idea of having all the recording sessions for Afriki supervised by the same sound engineer. The presence of his loyal backing band, Bamada, at his side also guaranteed a certain unity on the musical front. Koité and his group have been playing together for over fifteen years now, and even if this time round things were instilled with a certain sense of urgency, the Malian star hardly needed to push his compatriots to come up with the best for his compositions.
An imaginary line
Koité, a former teacher at Bamako’s INA (National Institute for the Arts) says he grew up on a healthy diet of rock. And he appears to have hit upon a secret formula for prolonging his success a full sixteen years after his first hit, Cigarette A Bana. "I’m the only one who can see the imaginary line my music has to follow," he says, "In my playing I try and reflect the different musical styles from all over Mali, in all their diversity, but I always stay within a framework inspired by tradition."
Koité uses the word "tradition" with extreme caution, however, claiming that he is not sure exactly what the term covers and insisting on the fact that everything in his world is constantly evolving. He feels that the term "traditional" is inappropriate to describe his own music, in fact, and prefers to refer to the latter as being "inspired by my cultural heritage." Assuming this distance from tradition has certainly given Koité more freedom in his work. And it has doubtless contributed to his international success – not to mention his ongoing popularity in Mali which appears to have bridged the generation gap with the greatest of ease!
Bertrand Lavaine
Translation : Julie Street
19/03/2004 -
