Thursday Evening, October 20, 2011, at 8:30 Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba Bassekou Kouyate , Ngoni Barou Kouyate , Ngoni Fousseyni Kouyate , Bass Ngoni Mousa Bah , Ngoni Ba Amy Sacko , Vocals Alou Coulibaly , Calabash Moussa Sissoko , Tamani and Yabara This performance is approximately 75 minutes long and will be performed without intermission. Target is proud to sponsor Target ® Free Thursdays at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. David Rubenstein Atrium Please make certain your cellular phone, pager, or watch alarm is switched off. WhiteLightFestival.org 39 The White Light Festival is sponsored by Time Upcoming White Light Festival Events: Warner Inc. Friday Evening, October 21 , at 8:00, Additional support for the White Light Festival is in Avery Fisher Hall provided by The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels London Symphony Orchestra Foundation, Inc. and Logicworks. Sir Colin Davis , Conductor Helena Juntunen , Soprano Endowment support is provided by the American Sarah Connolly , Mezzo-soprano Express Cultural Preservation Fund. Paul Groves , Tenor Matthew Rose , Bass MetLife is the National Sponsor of Lincoln Center . London Symphony Chorus BEETHOVEN: Missa solemnis First Republic Bank is the Official Sponsor of the Pre-concert lecture by Benjamin Sosland at 6:45 in Fashion Lincoln Center Online Experience. the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse Movado is an Official Sponsor of Lincoln Center . Saturday Morning, October 22, from 11:00 to 12:30, in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse United Airlines is the Official Airline of Lincoln Center . Conversations: The Self John Schaefer , Moderator WABC-TV is the Official Broadcast Partner of Jennifer Koh , Violin Lincoln Center. Marvin Minsky , Cognitive Scientist Edmund Morris , Author William Hill Winery is the Official Wine of Lincoln Center . Saturday Evening, October 22, at 7:30, in Alice Tully Hall General operating support for the David Rubenstein Gidon Kremer , Violin Atrium at Lincoln Center has been generously Giedre Dirvanauskaite , Cello provided by David M. Rubenstein, Cushman & Andrius Zlabys , Piano Wakefield, The Mai Family Foundation, Algin SILVESTROV: Dedication to J.S. Bach for violin and Management Co., LLC, the Xerox Foundation, and piano (quasi echo) the Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, Inc. BACH: Chaconne for solo violin GUBAIDULINA: Sonata for violin and cello Generous endowment support is provided by David (“Rejoice!”); Chaconne for piano M. Rubenstein and Oak Foundation. SHOSTAKOVICH: Piano Trio No. 2 White Light Lounge in at65 Target is proud to sponsor Target ® Free Thursdays at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. Sunday Afternoon, October 23, from 1:00 to 2:30, in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse Conversations: Soul Music John Schaefer , Moderator Alison S. Brooks , Anthropologist Philip Glass , Composer Sacred Harp For tickets, call (212) 721-6500 or visit WhiteLightFestival.org. Call the Lincoln Center Info Request Line at (212) 875-5766 to learn about program cancellations or request a White Light Festival brochure. Visit WhiteLightFestival.org for more information relating to the Festival’s programs. We would like to remind you that the sound of coughing and rustling paper might distract the performers and your fellow audience members. In consideration of the performing artists and members of the audience, those who must leave before the end of the performance are asked to do so between pieces, not during the performance. The taking of photographs and the use of recording equipment are not allowed in the building. Hunters’ Music from Mali by Violet Diallo “The Children of Sanéné and Kontron” is the honorific title of members of the Hunters’ Association, a source for more than a thousand years of distinctive West African music and other public declarations of their society’s worldview. According to Tereba Togola, Mali’s for - mer national director of art and culture, “Traditional hunting is about more than just killing animals. Hunters are healers, they are diviners…Hunters’ societies go back into the depths of time. I would say they are the first form of democracy. They are open to everybody .” In a society of villages deep in forests crossed by the Niger River and its tributaries, for centuries the hunters mediated between the local population and forces of nature , as well as unpredictable neighbors liable to attack and carry off populations and their posses - sions. This doubly insecure life lasted until the second half of the 13 th century , when Sunjata achieved a federation of areas known as the Mandé Empire, which covered a large part of modern West African states, with its heartland in Mali and Guinea. The emperor’s political philosophy of installing peace and order was underpinned by the hunters’ charter extolling social cohesion. The charter is one of the earliest declarations of human rights , which opens with this verse: The Children of Sanéné and Kontron say: A human life is a life: It is true that one life may come into existence before another But no life is more ancient, more respectable than another life, Just as no human life is worth more than another life. Sanéné and Kontron were the archetypal ancestors, female and male —but contrary to other creation myths, they are seen as the perfect human beings. Historian Youssouf Tata Cissé notes: “From no (defined) country or ethnic background, they are the incarnation of human virtues expressed to the highest degree .” Their children, the hunters, sought to emulate these virtues through initiation into local associations, long years of training, and exclusion of those whose behavior was unsatisfactory. “Philanderers, cowards, those who cannot put up with thirst and hunger cannot be hunters,” states Malian professor Cheick Cherif Keita. Hunters’ associations still thrive throughout West Africa, largely through their music , which was originally intended for moments of celebration after a successful hunt. Popular recordings of this type of music make up the largest proportion of cassettes on sale in rural markets in southern Mali, often by well-known hunter performers in groups of three using specific instruments (such as the hunter’s harp and a metal percussion tube) with a strong lead singer. However, the genre is alluded to by other Malian artists as well, such as Bassekou Kouyate and his band, Ngoni Ba. All have grown up listening to hunters with their references to Sanéné and Kontron, praising their virtues. The virtues are expressed through ancient proverbs and references to wild animals and trees that are scarcely known to urban populations today, but that have immediate significance to the older rural population and keep alive a reference to social norms that everyone recognizes. —Copyright © 2011 by Violet Diallo WhiteLightFestival.org Notes on Bassekou the “Old Lion” of the ngoni, a cultural giant and political provocateur during the years Kouyate and the Ngoni when Mali was a French colony. “We’ve had the ngoni in our country since before by Banning Eyre the birth of Jesus Christ,” said Kouyate. “It goes back to the empire of Ouagadou. But Bassekou Kouyate rates among Africa’s I thought it was time to revive the music greatest living instrumentalists—both a and put it on the international plane. Me, master of tradition and a groundbreaking I’ve toured a bit. I’ve seen the world, and I innovator. He plays one of the world’s old - knew this was great music. So this is why est known string instruments, a “spike I created a group of ngonis to show the lute” with a carved wood body covered by world that we have this instrument that a dried skin drumhead, and gut or fishing- has not been exploited the way it should.” line strings secured to a fretless doweling neck. This versatile lute exists all over One piece of history that came to fascinate North and West Africa, so there is no sur - Kouyate involves the banjo, which evolved prise that it goes by many names. In from spike lutes played by enslaved Kouyate’s homeland, Mali, they call it Africans in the American South. Kouyate “ngoni,” or, for the big, low-pitched ver - came to understand this when he was sion, “ngoni ba. ” invited to a convention of banjo players at the Tennessee Banjo Institute in Cedars of Ngoni Ba is also the name of the ground - Lebanon, Tennessee, in 1990 . There he breaking band Kouyate founded in 2005. met 400 players of all kinds of banjo music, Kouyate and his musicians have created a among them Taj Mahal, who invited dynamic fusion bridging far-flung worlds of Kouyate to improvise with him on the musical tradition—from the melodious ora - stage—the start of their lifelong friendship. tory of urbane Mandé griots (storytellers) to “At that moment,” recalled Kouyate, “I had the down-home grit of Bambara blues, to never seen a banjo. I had never heard the the serenity and grace of the northern sound of a banjo. I touched the instrument desert. The iconic desert maestro Ali Farka and found that I could play it. It was like the Touré featured Kouyate on the final record - ngoni, the same thing really. So that was a ings and performances of his life. Beyond big, big discovery for me.” Kouyate went Mali’s borders, Kouyate has been a tireless on to explore the ngoni-banjo connection in ambassador for the ngoni, jamming and collaborations with Taj Mahal, as well as rubbing shoulders with rockstars—Bonnie with banjo maverick Béla Fleck, who has Raitt, Eric Clapton, Taj Mahal, and Béla jammed, toured, and recorded with Fleck, among others. For all the ngoni’s sto - Kouyate in recent years. ried past, it is hard to imagine this humble lute has ever known a greater champion Kouyate’s forays into blues, rock, jazz, and than Kouyate.