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Toumani Diabaté back with a solo album
The spiritual sound of the kora
Paris
23/01/2008 -
It's just after 1pm on Saturday, 19 January, and the Patio de Banderas, in the heart of Seville's historic old town is buzzing with an excited crowd. Suddenly, a horse-drawn carriage rolls onto the Patio surrounded with its famous orange trees, their branches bent beneath the weight of luscious-looking fruit (but bite into the oranges at this season and they'll leave the most bitter taste in your mouth!) The carriage pulls up in front of the Alcazar, one of the sumptuous palaces Seville boasts so many of, and an imposing African man steps down, dressed in an immaculate 'boubou', holding a mysterious object in his hand – a huge gourd topped by what appears to be a long stringed neck tapering up towards the sky. Photographers focus their lenses and start snapping away as a crowd of tourists looks on, slightly baffled by all the fuss.
The mystery man in question turns out to be the Malian musician Toumani Diabaté, aka the greatest kora-player in the world. Their curiosity satisfied, the tourist crowd move on, guide books clutched in hand, in search of architectural rather than musical sights to wonder at. This leaves a smaller knot of journalists and record industry professionals milling about in the square, before the signal comes to follow Diabaté through the impressive front door of the Alcazar.
Diabaté is in town to present a sneak preview of tracks from his new album, The Mandé Variations. The night before, in fact, the musician performed an hour-long concert at the Alcazar to an audience of 200. (The 'happy few' invited to attend included the mayor of Seville himself). Amidst a surreal décor of chandeliers, tapestries and other antique wall hangings, the world's greatest kora-player served up a series of spellbinding tracks, most of them from his forthcoming album, The Mandé Variations, scheduled for release in a few weeks' time on the respected British world music label World Circuit (responsible for releasing cult albums by the likes of Buena Vista Social Club, Anga Diaz, Oumou Sangaré and Ali Farka Touré).
Performing alone on stage, Toumani Diabaté launched into an impressive rendition of Cantelowes, a track from his new album which turned out to be a subtle reworking of one of his cult favourites, Diaraby, a traditional Malian love song. He followed this with Kaounding Cissoko, a track "dedicated to the world's late great kora-players." (Kaounding Cissoko was, he explained, the name of a kora virtuoso from Senegal who died in 2003 and spent a large part of his career accompanying the Senegalese singing star Baaba Maal).
Following Friday night's concert performance, Diabaté returned to the Alcazar on Saturday to explain the whys and wherefores of his new album to an assembled crowd of journalists at a press conference. A number of questions were fired at him from the floor, the press particularly wanting to know what had prompted the kora-player to bring out a solo album now after a lifetime of gloriously diverse collaborations (ranging from the nuevo flamenco group Ketama, in Seville, in 1987 for the seminal world music album Songhaï to Iceland's alternative pop princess Björk). Why such a solo surprise after his last collective album recorded with the Symmetric Orchestra, an African 'big band' made up of singers and musicians from various countries across West Africa?
A spiritual message
Speaking to a crowd of Spanish reporters as well as their journalistic counterparts from further afield (i.e. the UK, Holland and France), Toumani Diabaté briefly retraced the outlines of his career since his debut album, Kaira (recorded in London in 1987 and released on the international scene the following year). So what had motivated the recording of his latest solo album, The Mandé Variations, two decades on? "Well, most people are familiar with the kora now," he explained, "They more or less know what a kora looks like, how it's made, the fact that it's got 21 strings. But very few people realise that the kora has a spiritual message." Faced with today's dog-eat-dog world where the individual pursuit of money and material goods appears to have taken priority over basic human values, the Malian musician insists society is crying out for a return to spirituality.
And the kora, Diabaté believes, has an instrumental role to play in putting the human race back in touch with those fundamental values. "Let me just point out, once again," he says, "that African music isn't just about wild dancing and pounding percussion. In Africa, we also play a softer kind of music for meditation." For Diabaté, his new solo album is also a means of expressing something more intimate and getting in touch with emotions that lie deep at the core of the self. Playing solo obviously gives the virtuoso kora-player more scope for improvisation, too.
"When you've got all these other musicians playing around you," Diabaté admits, "you can't just take flight and go off in any old direction, because you'll lose everyone else. That means that you can't play anything just trusting your instinct - and let's face it, that's exactly what music like ours is based on. African music has never been written down as a score."
While letting his creative string-playing run riot in his solo shows, Diabaté has not totally turned his back on the idea of collective performance. He is due to set off on a tour of the U.S. with the Symmetric Orchestra in March of this year. And the following month he returns to France for a series of solo shows - as well as a number of performances with four backing musicians!
In concert at Les Bouffes du Nord, Paris, 25 & 26 April. Tour dates in May.
Patrick Labesse
Translation : Julie Street
04/03/2010 -
07/04/2006 -
