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Debademba family united
First eponymous album
Paris
25/01/2011 -
In Bambara, Debademba means big family. It was in the Parisian neighbourhood of Belleville that this family got together, when a Burkinabé guitarist, Abdoulaye Traoré, met a singer from Bamako. RFI Musique interviewed them upon the release of their first album.
Our rendezvous was in a bar in Belleville, the neighbourhood where Abdoulaye Traoré has been living for five years and the starting point of the Debademba adventure in 2002. That year, the guitarist, who was born in Burkina Faso in 1971, chose to lay down his hat in Paris after years spent scouring the West African music scene.
The self-taught musician played with the singer Seika Barou, then percussionist Adama Dramé in Bouaké, before joining the Go de Kotiba band, one of the numerous spin-offs of the Abidjan national ballet, with which he played for several years. “All African artists go to Abidjan. It helped me develop my music differently.” When Côte d’Ivoire slid into crisis, Abdoulaye Traoré decided to follow his own path. That was the very beginning of Debademba, “the family” in Bambara, loosely encompassing the idea of a family of artists.
Meeting point
In Belleville, Abdoulaye Traoré soon became a regular feature of Parisian nightspots, from La Bellevilloise to French Kawa, where he tested out Debademba’s original repertoire. He rubbed shoulders with the Afro scene, from Hindi Zhara, whom he accompanied more than once, to Fatoumata Diawara, who made two appearances on his first disk.
"I composed for the group for years, but what was missing was a singer to be able to record a real album.” Just at that point of our conversation, as if by chance, Mohamed Diaby appeared in the doorway. “His mother, the Ivoirian griot Coumba Kouyaté, kept talking to me about this son of hers with an incredible voice. I didn’t know if it was just griot talk.” Abdoulaye was quickly convinced by the singer, who arrived from Bamako in 2008, where he had just won the equivalent of Star Academy with the would-be hit, Zouloukalanani.
“We got talking and it was all settled pretty quickly,” reminisced the young, velvet-voiced man who immediately confessed to a weakness for “Michael [Jackson]. I do Bambara versions of his hits.” A fan of Stevie Wonder and Salif Keïta, Céline Dion and Sékouba Bambino, “and even Arab music,” he performed at a lot of baptisms and weddings. “But I wanted to move away from the griot world and create my own style: Mandingo with an American vibe.”
Abdoulaye is certain he has found the missing ingredient to perfect his recipe: “Mohamed is incredible! We work well and everything goes really fast. On my tracks, he adapts his words.” With one of them holding a guitar and the other a pen, they worked together to compose the repertoire of the disk they recorded in March 2010 on the Chapa Blues label, thanks to connections with Victor Démé, “An old friend of Bobo Dioulasso”. Once the disk was in the bag, they set off to play the Parisian venues, and the grapevine got buzzing. They ignited some “overheated” nights at the Olympic Café, and shook up the Bal de l’Afrique Enchantée, an adventure with which the twosome were involved from the start in April 2010.
African groove
With its Afro-rock and blues folk, Arab-Andalusian echos and tinges of Wassolou, their style clearly draws from numerous influences, like on Ma, a homage to Abdoulaye’s mother, and Takama, a celebration of the art of meeting people, “The essence of Debademba’s spirit”.
“We mainly do African groove,” resumes Mohamed who, at the grand old age of not quite 25, sings praises of valiant warriors on Kiefali, a track written in the memory of deported Africans, and salutes the memory of Thomas Sankara, the exemplary President executed when the singer was a mere babe in arms. On that day, in 1987, Abdoulaye Traoré remembers crying. “He was a model that no African should ever forget.” Which is why he wanted to conclude his first disk with this song imbued with the ghost of Sankara making a pan-African speech. “Listening to his voice does me good. It’s a great lesson in responsibility, fraternity and modernity, when you see what’s happening in Côte d’Ivoire.”
Agnakamina
Jacques Denis
Translation : Anne-Marie Harper
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