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Independence and music: Guinea and authenticity

A politicised music scene

Paris

03/05/2010 -

Guinea was the first sub-Saharan country in Francophone Africa to celebrate its independence, in 1958. It is also something of a model country in terms of music, thanks to the proactive (but also ideological) cultural policy of its president Sékou Touré. The political climate favoured the creation of a number of high-quality government-sponsored bands, such as Bembeya Jazz, whose reputations have crossed borders and transcended their era.

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In Guinea, the total rupture with the past that independence brought held true for music as much as for politics. The new leaders wanted nothing to remain from the colonial past: just months after the birth of the new state, a decree was issued ordering all private bands to be dissolved immediately.

Then on 15 January 1959, a new group with national status was officially created: the Syli Orchestre National, which brought together the best musicians of the country, reflecting the Guinean President Sékou Touré’s desire to use culture as a means of unifying people domestically, as well as giving Guinea a recognisable face for the outside world.

Transcending folklore

Already in 1952, the president’s comrade-in-arms (and co-composer of the Guinean national anthem Horoya) Fodeba Keita had put on a show in Paris entitled Les Ballets Africains, which had been a huge success. The show had featured a number of local musicians and singers, including the griot Sory Kandia Kouyaté – whom the Académie Charles-Cros later awarded a Grand Prix for his music in 1970. The troupe went on tour and recorded albums, but Sékou Touré was determined that the image of his country transcend what he considered folklore.

Highlife star ET Mensah, from neighbouring Ghana, often performed in Guinea’s capital Conakry, but contemporary Guinean music itself suffered from a lack of real identity. On the one hand there was the solid tradition of the griots. On the other, there was a huge amount of imported music consumed by the metropolitan elite, including genres such as tango, waltz, biguine, jazz, French variety and cha-cha-cha.

The banjo was gradually replaced by the guitar. Sidikiba Diabaté, founder of the Jazz Philharmonic and father of the country’s two most eminent guitar players, was one of the first to adopt this new instrument. Meanwhile saxophonists Momo Wandel and Kélétigui Traoré, who would later become stars of the Guinean scene, were doing their apprenticeship in the 1950s in groups such as La Joviale Symphonie, La Douce Parisette and le Harlem Jazz.

Modernising the musical landscape

Once they joined the Syli Orchestre National, led by the accordionist Kanfory Sanoussi, they were given the clear instructions not to play any more covers of international hits but to draw inspiration from the local heritage and modernise the country’s musical traditions – an approach based on the notion of authenticity. Local musicians were aided in this enterprise by a Frenchman who had paradoxically arrived in Guinea just as all his compatriots were leaving.

Martinican clarinettist Honoré Coppet was an habitué of Paris clubs, where he was instrumental in popularising certain tropical styles. In 1958 he left for Africa on a six-week contract, but ended up staying ten years! In Conakry (and also in Dakar in Senegal), he trained young musicians, taught music theory and helped arrange music for brass bands.

Members of the Syli Orchestre National were also charged with helping other local groups, following their successful showing at the World Festival of Youth and Students held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1962. On their return to Guinea, they criss-crossed the country meeting up with local groups that had been put together as part of Sékou Touré’s cultural program.

Each region had their own group, and a competition, the “Quinzaine Artistique”, was held every two years. The musicians in these groups were paid by the state, which also provided them with new equipment every two years.

As more and more musicians were co-opted into the Syli Orchestre National, it was decided to divide it into two groups: the Orchestre de la Paillote (which later became Kélétigui and the Tambourinis), and the Orchestre du Jardin de Guinée (later Balla and the Balladins). They quickly became major players on the Guinean musical scene.

The birth of Bembeya Jazz

The all-woman Gendarmerie band (renamed as the Amazones de Guinée) and the Republican Guard band (later known as the Super Boiro Band) played significant roles, but it was the Beyla band that became emblematic of the scene. Later renamed Bembeya Jazz, the group was one of the first to be recorded locally between 1961 and 1963 by the American Leo Sarkisian, for a series of ten albums entitled Sons nouveaux d’une nation nouvelle (new sounds of a new nation).

His initiative encouraged government authorities to set up a recording studio at the national radio station La Voix de la Révolution, to record groups whose albums would appear on the state-run label Syliphone.

This new development represented a further step in the politicisation of the cultural arena, which was in turn reflected in the attitude of the performers themselves. Through conviction, opportunism, or perhaps both, groups sometimes succumbed to the temptation to let themselves be used as instruments of propaganda for the regime, in exchange for favours.

The Horoya Band, which was formed in Kankan in 1964 and became very popular from the end of the decade, found a happy medium with their track Alphabétisation. As one can read on the sleeve notes of their album Trio fédéral de pointe, the song is “dedicated to the national literacy movement launched by the Guinean government".

Commitment and culture

In a period of global ideological confrontation, this political-cultural interventionism boosted President Sékou Touré’s image as a man committed to social progress and a key figure of the decolonisation of Africa.

Indeed it was at his invitation that the renowned South African singer Miriam Makeba settled in Conakry, following a dispute with the U.S. authorities, which had granted her asylum a few years previously. She was able to successfully relaunch her career from Guinea, performing across the world with musicians from her new home.