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Home , Afel Bocoum, Culture of Mali, Tracy Chapman

CAP UCLA AND KCRW PRESENT An evening with Rokia Traoré

Fri, Sep 26 Rokia Traoré Lead Vocals, Giovanni Ferrario Guitar Royce Hall Mamah Diabaté Ngoni 8pm Fatim Kouyaté Backing Vocals Moïse Ouattara Drums Kouamé Matthieu Nguessan Bass Guitar RUNNING TIME: Approximately 90 minutes; Rokia Traoré No intermission “It’s clear that it’s inspired by rock music,” says ’s international star Rokia Traoré of her new album, Beautiful Africa. “But I didn’t want to make rock and roll in the Western tradition…I wanted something that’s rock and roll but still Malian and still me.” ON THE TERRACE: DJ set from KCRW’s The past year has been a quite extraordinarily productive period for Traoré. One of the Tom Schnabel on the Royce most inventive female singer/songwriters in Africa today, she is remarkable not just for terrace from 7:00-7:45pm the range of her powerful and emotional voice but also for the sheer variety of her work. She has written three wildly different new sets of music: the acoustic Damou (Dream), the often bluesy Donguili (Sing), and the rock-influenced Donke (Dance), in which she set out to show “three different aspects of Malian culture and my own personality.” Produced by CAP UCLA SPONSOR: the UK’s prestigious Barbican, all three were performed at different London venues in one Supported in part by the week last summer—a feat she repeated at this year’s Sydney Festival in Australia. She has Ginny Mancini Endowment toured Britain on the Africa Express train, stopping off around the country for concerts for Vocal Performance. that included collaborations with as well as Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones, who joined her backing band for the London finale. And she has continued acting as well, with British and European performances in and Peter Sellars’ much- MEDIA SPONSOR: praised theatrical/musical re-working of the Shakespearian story of Desdemona, for which she wrote the music.

Now comes Beautiful Africa, an album of the powerful new songs, first heard in her Donke project, reminding listeners it was rock music that first inspired Traoré’s remarkable career. “I really like rock,” she said, “and it was because of rock that I wanted to play music.” When she was growing up, an older brother used to play her Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. “It wasn’t all I listened to—I discovered jazz and with my dad, and Malian and other African music, and French chanson, but it was rock music that made me want to learn guitar.” MESSAGE FROM THE CENTER: There are three guitarists on the album, including Traoré herself, but It is not untoward or hyperbolic to apply the word magical though the record is constructed around rock riffs and sturdy bass to Malian music. Music is an integral part of the country’s work, it still has a distinctively West African feel, thanks to rousing culture, its societal structure, its entire way of life and way of performances from Mamah Diabaté on the n’goni, the ancient, being in the world. For an art form to play such an important harsh-edged African lute. It’s an instrument that Traoré has used in role in the history and ethos of an entire nation is magical. compositions throughout her career, and she argues, “You can put it And it follows that Mali is a country that has become known with everything. I’ve used n’goni in classical music projects, and it around the world for its extraordinary musicians. goes with blues, or jazz, or rock and roll. It’s a great instrument!”

The ancient tradition of Mali weilds storytelling roots Traoré’s changes of musical direction usually start with “a sound that that run deep and yet branch themselves across time and I imagine…a sound inside my head.” She didn’t want to imitate what space, through generations and into hearts and minds of other people had done “because I need to do what I imagine—that’s peoples of all race, creed and religion around the world. the reason I’m making music.” But she needed someone to help her create the sound that she imagined, and eventually decided on John The modern musicians who share the blues-based music Parish, the writer, guitarist, and producer who has worked with of Mali share with us their certain magic. A soul-stirring, Tracy Chapman, Eels, and PJ Harvey. uplifting, and yes, even sometimes heart-wrenching magic. “I chose to work with John,” she says, “because when I listened to PJ In 2012, Islamic extremists overtook Northern Mali, imposing Harvey or his other work, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I could harsh Shariah Law that included an attempt to ban music. imagine what the man who made this sound could do with me if we Mali’s artists refuse to be silenced. This art, so magical, so collaborated on my music. I was curious about it, but not sure about integral to the , will not slip away, thanks to getting what I was imagining.” During the recordings, she said “he of the bravery, the artistry, the purpose and intention of the just asked me to listen to things and make my choice, and sometimes people who continue to create and share it with us. when I didn’t like or understand something, he changed it.” And was she happy with the results? “This is what I wanted to make and I’m Tradition and exploration coalesce in Rokia Traoré, who we happy. It’s even more than I imagined.” are utterly delighted to present tonight with her full band. Rokia, like so many artists from Mali, serves as a bridge Traoré, Parish, and Stefano Pilia play on the album, between worlds, between the modern and the ancient, with Nicolai Munch-Hansen on bass, percussion from Sebastian between memory and reverie. Rokia’s music speaks a magical Rochford (Polar Bear), ‘human beatbox’ effects from Jason Singh, language, deftly traversing themes of hope as well as sorrow and n’goni playing and backing vocals by fellow Malian musicians and defiance. Fatim Kouyaté and Bintou Soumounou, both members of the Foundation Passerelle that Traoré established in , the This evening has taken shape differently than we originally Malian capital, to help her fellow Malians prepare for careers in intended. One of Mali’s most-revered artists and a man who music and sustain the growth of Mali’s rich musical culture.. Traoré is known as one of the greatest instrumentalists in the world, was awarded the inaugural Roskilde Festival World Music Award in Toumani Diabaté was set to appear with his son Sidiki as they 2009 for her work with the Foundation. toured in support of their recent album of duets. The songs are in the West African language of Bambara, as well as Unfortunately, just yesterday we were informed by Toumani’s French and occasional bursts of English, and the often personal management that they have experienced unexpected personal lyrics are concerned with Traoré’s thoughts on her own life, and on and logistical difficulties to start the tour. These factors, her tragically battered homeland. complicated by Toumani’s poor health, have resulted in their inability to come to the States. Everyone deeply regrets the Mali is a country that has become known around the world for circumstances that have lead to this outcome. We are working its extraordinary musicians—from Traoré through to Amadou & with the artist’s management to review the feasibility of Mariam, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, Fatoumata Diawara, rescheduling this tour. , Bassekou Kouyaté, Oumou Sangaré, , , among others—and was once a great tourist destination, We wish him the best. And we’re very grateful you are here famous for the desert cities and for the , as well as the tonight to help us welcome Rokia Traoré to Royce Hall for celebrated Festival in The Desert. But over the past year it has the first time. slipped into political chaos, with the President overthrown in a military coup in the capital, and rebel groups taking over large Make no mistake, she is going to rock this place. sections of the north of the country. The rebels then splintered into different factions, with those initially fighting for independence in Mali’s most precious assets are its music and culture, its the north usurped by extremist Islamist groups, some linked to al- traditional faith and the bonds that bind its many different Qaeda, and who went on to ban music in the areas they controlled. peoples. And its artists have an innate ability to create ties Military forces from France, Mali, and other African nations have that bind between us all. fought to repel these advances.

That part of tonight’s performance is unchanged. The album’s title track, built around the sturdiest rock riff on the album, is very much a love song to “battered, wounded Africa,” Thank you for joining us. and reflects Traoré’s despair and fury at what has happened to her country, while commenting on problems elsewhere in Africa, from Ivory Coast to Congo. “The flood of my tears is in full spate, ardent is my pain,” she sings, while arguing that, “Conflict is no solution… Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight.” Other songs on the album include the thoughtful ballad “Sarama,” a praise song to Malian women, partly sung in English, and the personal “Mélancolie,” a surprisingly upbeat song about loneliness and sadness that has already become a radio hit in France. Traoré says that she was lonely as a child, partly because her father was a diplomat and constantly on the move, and partly because she was the middle child in a family of seven.

Another, more upbeat song, “Sikey,” is also autobiographical, looking back at the criticism she received when she first set out to become a professional musician, and her determination to keep going. After all, she was not a griot, from a family of traditional musicians, but the daughter of a diplomat. And although she had no musical training, she gave up her studies in Brussels to return to Mali to create a new form of music, in which her songs would be backed by her acoustic guitar, along with n’goni and the xylophone-like balaba balafon, two instruments not normally played together in Africa.

Her breakthrough came when she was hailed as the ‘African Discovery’ of 1997 by Radio France Internationale after playing at the Angouleme Festival, in France, and since then she has continued to experiment and explore new ideas. In 2003, her album Bowmboï included a collaboration with Kronos Quartet and was awarded a prestigious BBC Radio 3 World Music Award. Her 2009 album Tchamantché reflected her new fascination with the Gretsch electric guitar, and won a Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of a Grammy, as well as a Songlines Artist of the Year Award for Traoré.

She has twice collaborated with the maverick director Peter Sellars, who in 2006 invited her to write and perform a work for his New Crowned Hope project, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birthday. Traoré replied by imagining Mozart as a griot in the time of the 13th-century African ruler Soundiata Keita, whose empire was centred in what is now Mali. She also recently collaborated with Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison and Sellars on the theatre piece Desdemona, bringing an African dimension to the story of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine. The piece premiered in Vienna in the summer of 2011 and received its New York premiere at Lincoln Center that fall; its UK premiere was at the Barbican in London in the summer of 2012. called it “a remarkable, challenging and bravely original new work.”

It was the experience of acting in Desdemona, she says, that led her to create the Damou (Dream) project, performed in London last year, in which she showed her skills as a storyteller, as well as a singer, with her version of stories from The Epic of Soundiata, dealing with events leading to the birth of Africa’s legendary ruler. These are stories that would traditionally be told by Mali’s — indeed, Traoré said she could only create the show because she has been learning from one of Mali’s finest female griots, the singer Bako Dagnon.

Rokia Traoré is indeed a remarkable artist, and it is difficult to think of anyone else who can switch from ancient Malian culture to acting and then to African rock and roll.

—By Robin Denselow The boards of CAP UCLA and Design for Sharing would like to thank all the members who have made a choice to join them in supporting arts education and the art of performance at UCLA.

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