Why lions need historians

On Rendez-vous à Bobo this month I ask why lions need historians with artist Deanna Tyson whose exhibition "Until lions write their own history" is at the Centre of African Studies in Cambridge.

Baaba Maal by Deanna Tyson

Musical highlights include Fatoumata Diawara...  



Better known in Mali as an actress for her role in Burkinabé director Dani Kouyaté's film Sia le rêve du python, Fatou is one of the most exciting voices to emerge from Mali in recent years, and an outspoken advocate for Mali's culture of tolerance during the recent crisis.

We also hear from elder of South African music Sipho Mabuse, and kora player Ballaké Sissoko who performs with his quartet in Cambridge on Saturday 30th November.

Rendez-vous à Bobo November 2013 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

Écoutez!

One of my hopes for the Rendez-vous à Bobo project was to highlight the creative energy of a group of musicians in Burkina Faso who I'm also very lucky to call my friends.  

The ideas, innovation and resourcefulness that spring from Africa, offer an alternative narrative to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche has called `The single story' often told about the continent.

And so in this spirit, I'd like to invite you to pass an hour with me on the last Thursday of every month on Cambridge 105.  From Casablanca to Capetown, Dakar to Dar es Salaam, please join me for my new radio programme Rendez-vous à Bobo!

Rendez-vous à Bobo October 2013 by Rendez-Vous À Bobo on Mixcloud

`Le clip'

A new short film by Shameela Beeloo

`Brilliant balafon'

Kamélé Yeleen reviewed in Songlines

Kamélé Yeleen has been reviewed in the October issue (#95) of leading music magazine Songlines. 

 

Martin Sinnock praised our album as "well-realised", showcasing Moussa's "prowess as a balafon player."  He also compliments Baragnouma as "a good backing unit of percussionists who ensure that the musical pace never flags."

The magazine is in the shops now, or can be bought digitally here. 

`Getting competitive' Le Triangle du Balafon

Sikasso is a typical West African junction town. A crossroads in the Sahel where ancient mini buses with benedictions in peeling paint or names like `Obama', rattle to a halt, small windows spilling open in a tangle of elbows and heads, roofs piled high with a cargo of mopeds, bleating goats and baskets brimming with ripe mangoes or dried fish.  For these stoic passengers, Sikasso is a brief rest on a long journey as they transit between Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire. For another group of itinerant travellers though Sikasso is the destination to which they are heading. 

 

Once a year musicians from across West Africa arrive in the busy town on the border between Mali and Burkina Faso.  The occasion is Le Triangle du Balafon, a fraternal but fiercely competitive celebration of the West African xylophone.  For months, groups from Mali, Burkina Faso and as far as Guinea Conakry have been rehearsing and choreographing. Many have composed a new piece to debut at the festival, and are united in their hope of returning home with the small bronze statue awarded to best group. 

 

Last year, first prize was won by the group of Mamadou Diabaté.  In this video we can enjoy the virtuosity that ensured the little bronze statue was packed carefully into one of those Sikasso mini buses, and came home to Burkina Faso.        

            

 

Made in Burkina Faso

The Guardian recently published a nice photo story from Burkina Faso on the production of Bògòlanfini also known as `mud cloth'.

 

Photograph: David Crookes

 

"In griot time" A book review

Banning Eyre is an American guitarist, writer and broadcaster, and a regular contributor to Afropop Worldwide http://www.afropop.org/wp/ . A lifelong student of African guitar styles, his curiosity for the unique playing styles found across the continent has taken him to West and Southern Africa, and he has generously shared the many lessons he has learnt in shady compounds in his book African guitar atlas.

In 1995 he packed his guitar, and shipped a Roland keyboard amp (the preferred amplifier of many African guitarists) to the Malian capital Bamako . The amplifier was both a gift and down payment for an intensive musical apprenticeship with the great Malian guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, with whom Banning was to live and study for seven months, a story told with humility, insight and honesty in his book In griot time.

Evoking a Bamako of late afternoon wedding parties where bright cotton clothes are softened by the deep ochre soil, In Griot Time follows the passage of the dry season as it progresses alongside Banning's understanding of Manding guitar towards the arrival of the first Bamako rains. 

Asserting that "to learn African music, you must immerse yourself in the social world that produced it, a world that encompasses ideas, beliefs, rituals and values", Banning's holistic approach unfolds in an engaging narrative that introduces us to the extended family of his host and mentor Djelimady Tounkara, as well as an all star cast of Malian musicians including Oumou Sangaré and Sali Sidibe.

The system of patronage that exists in West Africa and from which many griot earn an income is  frankly examined, and we learn the true story of the project that became Buena Vista Social Club,  originally conceived by World Circuit's Nick Gold as a collaboration Djelimady and Cuban musicians, later realised as AfroCubism.

Whether describing Djelimady's graceful and deft guitar playing; "a stately cycle of notes, bristling with a tough certainty", or a female praise singer "the jelimuso's first note scored the air like a steamship horn announcing entry to port", the story is told with an excitement and reverence for the music and musical culture that will resonate with anyone who has delved into this tradition and experienced the epiphanies, frustration, and joy of learning music in West Africa.

"In Griot time" by Banning Eyre - ISBN 1566397596