In the Barbican Hall last night, in an emotional but rousing evening’s music, one Malian superstar celebrated the memory of another.
Continue reading Toumani Diabaté – The Ali Farka Variations at Barbican Hall
Posts tagged griot
With so many West African traditional-modern ensembles making a name on the world music scene, is there more room for many more? The Cumbancha label obviously thinks so as the first release of its new ‘Discovery’ series is by young singer and balafón player Kimi Djabaté. Listening to Karam, it seems like a great catch
Bassekou Kouyaté is better known as the ngoni player on seminal recordings by Toumani Diabaté and Ali Farka Touré. Segu Blue is his assured, elegant and long overdue debut
A few years ago a group of hoteliers got together in the pleasant but unremarkable stopover of Segou along the banks of the Niger river to work out how to get people to stay for a while in their town. Thus the Festival sur le Niger was born and this year it burst its banks
Continue reading Festival sur le Niger – Dancing through the Tears
Catching Ba Cissoko’s band on stage is like watching African lightning bottled in front of you. The aching beauty of the acoustic kora, the thrill of an electrified kora and the cross currents of tradition and modernity in west African music meeting in one band. The whole — as dazzling as it is — feels unstable, powerful, beguiling.
Continue reading Ba Cissoko – Visitors from Electric Griot Land
This album has a new take on a very ancient tradition. The kora and the griot culture presides over this musical meeting in the masterful hands of Seckou Keita from Senegal, but it’s teased and challenged by other instruments and musical traditions, represented by the Egyptian violinist Samy Bishai, Italian double bassist Davide Mantovani and Gambian percussionist Surahata Susso.
Continue reading The Seckou Keita Quartet – Afro-Mandinka Soul
Global music culture’s answer to Franz Ferdinand, Zuba deliver a warm and compelling sound forged in the crucible of Glasgow but composed of elements from around the world on this double A-side single taken from their debut album Zuba
From the first few, sharply beautiful notes of this exquisite pairing, it is already clear that this album will be one of the key records of the year. Ali Farka Touré’s guitar and Toumani Diabaté’s Kora emit a phenomenal series of notes that interlock with each other like two intricate cogs in some otherworldly machine.
Continue reading Ali Farka Toure & Toumani Diabate – In the Heart of the Moon
