fri/// fri feb ONE NIGHT IN BAMAKO / 8:00 PM 14, 2014 8:00PM THE MAGIC OF MALI

Bassekou Kouyate

“…genius, a living proof that the blues comes from the region of Segu.” – Taj Mahal on Bassekou Kouyate

Fatoumata Diawara This performance of One Night in Bamako/Magic of Mali is made possible, in part, by performance benefactor

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Program to be announced from the stage. Ngoni Ba Sekou Kouyate, lead ngoni Fatoumata Diawara, vocals Aminata Sacko, lead vocals Bassekou Kouyate, ngoni Moctar Kouyate, calabash Mamadou Kouyate, ngoni bass Mahamadou Tounkara, percussion Abou Sissoko, ngoni medium biographies Moustafa Kouyate, ngoni ba Fatoumata Diawara, vocals Bassekou Kouyate, ngoni Perpetuating Mali’s rich musical tradition, Fatoumata Diawara presents a Virtuoso picker, musical visionary and one of Africa’s greatest joyous mix of the vibrant and understated, combining songs about love, instrumentalists, Bassekou Kouyate blurs the lines between West African politics and empowerment with arresting melodies soaring over intricate and American roots music. His instrument, the ngoni, is an ancient guitar and drum arrangements. Inspired by Wassoulou tradition, jazz and traditional “spike lute” – an ancestor of the banjo, sharing its taut-skinned blues, she has created her own unique contemporary folk sound with drum body, percussive attack and varied picking techniques. Since 2005, a distinctly African spin on the concept of the female singer-songwriter. Bassekou has led Ngoni Ba, the first-ever group built around not one but four ngonis. At the center of the music is Diawara’s warm, affecting voice, spare, rhythmical guitar playing and gorgeously melodic songs that draw The ngoni is the key instrument of the griot culture. Unlike the kora, whose powerfully on her own often troubled experience. Born in Côte d’Ivoire, history goes back only a few hundred years, the ngoni has been the main raised in Mali and now based in Paris, Diawara’s life covers the gamut instrument in griot storytelling going back to the 13th century, to the days of contemporary African experience, fighting parental opposition to her of Soundiata Keita, founder of the Mali Empire. From the region of Ségou, artistic ambitions and the cultural prejudice faced by women throughout Bassekou’s repertoire is Bambara music, pentatonic in nature and as Africa, winning success as an actress in film and theater, and landing in close to the blues as you can get in Africa. the medium she was always destined to make her own: music. Over the years, Bassekou has collaborated with many musicians from Damon Albarn, Toumani Diabaté, Herbie Hancock and Led Zeppelin’s his Malian homeland and elsewhere. He was one of the key musicians John Paul Jones are just a few of the major players who have fallen on Ali Farka Touré’s posthumous album release Savane, having toured for Diawara’s effortless musical charm. Her presence has illuminated the world with Touré to great acclaim as the band’s solo ngoni player. shows in Europe by Africa Express, AfroCubism and Hancock’s Imagine He has played in the Symmetric trio alongside Toumani Diabaté (kora) project. Her 2012 Nonesuch debut Fatou is almost entirely her own and Kélétigui Diabaté (balafon) and was a part of the Taj Mahal/Toumani work: compositions and arrangements, backing vocals and percussion. Diabaté Kulanjan project. He features prominently on Youssou N’Dour’s It breathes with the natural warmth, confidence and spontaneity that are Rokku Mi Rokka and Dee Dee Bridgwater’s Red Earth and has toured with the essence of Diawara herself. Béla Fleck. His most recent album is Jama Ko (2013) with Ngoni Ba. 

Emily Burrill on One Night in Bamako

Many people know that Bamako, One Night In Bamako/Magic of Mali brings together two musicians the capital of Mali, perches on the who have a firm grasp of the traditional roots of their music, but who banks of the Niger River. What have made the music they play their own. most people do not realize is that this sprawling riverbank city is also Arguably, the ancient ngoni is now synonymous with Bassekou defined by its hills. Kouyate, whose expertise has introduced the instrument to the world music community. Fatoumata Diawara’s musical stylings are People joke that these two hills recognizably “Wassoulou Sound,” a distinctive and well-established are known as “the hill of power” musical genre from Southern Mali. But Diawara’s lyrical topics and (on which sits the Presidential composition are more contemporary folk, and quirky at that – her Palace, as well as a number of music is at once ultra-modern and steeped in tradition. Hearing government ministries) and “the Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba and Fatoumata Diawara perform at hill of knowledge” (on which sits the Memorial Hall assures us that Bamako’s heart beats long and strong. university). Between power and knowledge resides the heart of the city, and it is in the heart where we find the music. Emily Burrill is an assistant professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at UNC. Neither Fatoumata Diawara nor Bassekou Kouyate are originally from Bamako, but the heart of Bamako is where their paths intersect. carolina performing arts 13/14 35 In Mali, music holds life ≤Mali together despite political

unrestby Chris Vitiello 36 carolinaperformingarts.org When a flock of birds flies overhead, it’s impossible to hear the beauty of any particular bird’s song in the din.

Sidi Touré, a Malian griot, offered that African proverb on Public Radio ≤Mali International’s “The World” recently to explain the current political climate in his country, which has been in the news during the last year with a military coup, a nomadic rebellion and militant Islamic extremists in the north that French forces have helped stifle.

But the proverb also explains the importance of music to Africans, particularly as it relates to politics. A griot’s song is news and cultural communication. The talking that political leaders do trends toward the noise of the flock.

Throughout 2013 Western heads have shaken grimly reading about the conflict beneath some variation of the headline “Islamic militants have banned music in Mali.” Perhaps it’s an unsurprising hazard of a “news ticker” information culture that these headlines fall somewhere between oversimplification and inaccuracy. The truth lag in Mali is also symptomatic of the complex and shifting conflict zones and factions that spawned the stories in the first place.

When ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate and vocalist Fatoumata Diawara, two of Mali’s greatest contemporary musical talents, visit Chapel Hill in February for a concert called One Night in Bamako/The Magic of Mali, they represent a national musical scene as complex, shifting and rich as any in the world. And while music hasn’t been banned in Mali as exactly as the headlines imply, the most recent outbreak of civil unrest has been more than just another squawking bird in a crowded sky. ≥

carolina performing arts 13/14 37 well as sanctions and an embargo by the Economic Community of West African States. As the Tuareg declared northern Mali the autonomous state of Azawad, the Islamic extremist groups (including Al-Qaeda) that had helped them rebel turned upon them, seeing an opportunity to seize music power in the region. In Mali continued Quickly, throughout northern Mali, music clubs were closed and local festivals including the annual Festival of the Desert were canceled in the name of sharia law. Some musicians had their instruments destroyed and Northern Africa, like all postcolonial regions, presents a sociopolitical stories of physical harm and imprisonment surfaced. Some musicians left map with few borders, factions, governments or authorities recognized as the country or fled south to Bamako. But some less stringent restrictions legitimate by everyone. It’s difficult for Westerners to anticipate or even were even in place in the capital city. report upon the domino effect set off by any political change in the region. Some lines on the map can suddenly go dark, and new or old lines can Malian musicians, even in the Saharan landscape in the north, are world- light up. Some national or tribal narrative from decades or centuries ago renowned and numerous. Kouyate has achieved international fame as the can suddenly pick up again in the present day. global representative of the ngoni, an ancient stringed instrument from which the banjo might have evolved. Diawara’s blend of traditional music Mali is a diverse, huge country – nearly twice the area of Texas – stretching with blues and jazz elements has found an audience in Europe and across from Saharan sands in the north through a belt of the Sahel savannah the Atlantic. Add in kora virtouso Toumani Diabaté, sensational guitarist with its jewel city of Timbuktu, into the tropical south where the Niger River Ali Farka Touré, an iPod-ful of Afro-pop and hip-hop artists, as well as the runs through the capital of Bamako. Mali is landlocked, but borders the famed Tuareg band Tinariwen, and you have not just a lot of great tunes coastal countries of Senegal and Guinea to the west. but a cultural and economic sector rivaling or exceeding other Malian industries and exports. Tuareg nomads inhabit central and northern Mali, as well as Saharan and sub- Saharan areas of Algeria, Libya, Niger and Burkina Faso, all of whose Sharia law is not explicit on the subject of music. An extreme interpretation national borders mean little to the Tuareg. But the national politics mean considers music a distraction from devotion. But commentators have a lot. While Tuareg people flee the conflicts that blow in with democratic speculated that it’s just as likely that the Islamists intended to sabotage winds, Tuareg mercenaries can profit from them. the Malian economy or demoralize the Tuareg people.

Mali fell quickly into conflict in early 2012.D istracted by a Tuareg At the height of the instability, the international press began writing nationalist uprising in the north, the democratic government fell to a those oversimplifying headlines. Kouyate, in a January 2013 article military coup in March, drawing the ire of the international community as in The Guardian, unpacked the difference between “music is banned” and “music is effectively banned,” describing how the military’s safety concerns are what led to club closings and concert cancellations in the relatively stable capital.

38 carolinaperformingarts.org “The government is nervous and afraid of terrorist attacks on public Religious music, on the other hand, would not be banned, a point that Ndiaye gatherings,” he told a reporter. “They are asking everyone to wait until the feels has been consistently neglected by Western journalists covering the situation in the north has calmed down.” story. As an example of this blind spot, he remembers a post on the PRI Facebook page linking to what they claimed was a banned song. As 2012 drew to a close, French and Malian forces teamed up to quell the Islamists in the north, and a democratic government was re-established. “There’s no way any kind of Islamist would object to that song because that Diawara quickly assembled a large, Tuareg-heavy cast of musicians and song praised Muhammad. That’s just bad reporting,” he notes, also taking singers to record a new song and video entitled “Peace.” Something of a pains to differentiate Bamako, where on a recent visit he found music pretty Malian equivalent to “We Are the World,” the song expresses a preference much live and well, from the north. for a unified Mali over an Azawad separatist state. “I went to Bamako to interview musicians. The Tuareg presence in the song’s cast is I talked with one man until five o’clock significant. Musicians can stand together and and then he got up and said ‘Oh, I have speak of peace in a way that no politician or The government to go and play.’” government can. “The political situation is is nervous & afraid bad so it's time for the musicians to come You couldn’t possibly stop people from together,” Diawara said of the song. of terrorist attacks playing and listening to music, Ndiaye says, because that would be like stopping Where Kouyate explains the effect that on public gatherings… people from living. If the government temporary precautionary restrictions had on They are asking closes the clubs, the musicians will find the infrastructure of the Malian music scene, a backyard to play in. If extremists cancel Bouna Ndiaye, who hosts the syndicated radio everyone to wait the legendary Festival in the Desert, it’s program “Bonjour Africa” on WNCU, notes until the situation possible that the audiences reassemble the irrepressibility of music in Mali – which, elsewhere for an impromptu show. depending upon your beliefs, can be both a in The north uniting joy and a threat. Malian coherence, at this moment, is still has calmed down. debatable. There are no facts so much as Ndiaye rattles off what’s forbidden under sharia there are opinions about the stability of law: alcohol consumption, drug usage, prostitution. Extremists see these its government. Nonetheless, its regions have a tight causal relationship. behaviors as coming part and parcel with secular music, he says. They’re When leadership changes in Bamako, the north destabilizes. If rebels rise aiming at these behaviors with their effective ban – not the music itself. up in the north, restrictions are imposed in the capital. Lacking a sustained It’s comparable to Baptist ministers in the United States banning dancing body politic, Mali is really united through its music. The musicians are the or certain kinds of music in their communities to keep young people from only birds, right now, that can break away from the flock. committing peripheral sins. •

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