Show #73: Mamadou Diabate

June 14th, 2006

I hope that listeners are feeling patient and open-minded because I’m leaving rock’n'roll behind this week. I also want to apologize for my tardiness in posting a show – life just gets in the way sometimes.

Admonitions & apologies aside, I’m excited about today’s performance. It features the Mamadou Diabate Band. Although Diabate’s 2005 album, Behmanka, was nominated for a Grammy, I’m sure he’s not particularly well-known here in the States. His traditional stylings on the kora are not the stuff that popularizers of World Music such as Putumayo are keen on releasing.

Diabate has called the New York area home for about 10 years now but his homeland is in Mali, a country is West Africa. I had never heard of Mamadou Diabate until a few months ago when I obtained this show and the best source of info about him is his website:

Mamadou Diabate was born in 1975 in Kita, a Malian city long known as a center for the arts and culture of the Manding people of West Africa. As the name Diabate indicates, Mamadou comes from a family of griots, or jelis as they are known among the Manding. Jelis are more than just traditional musicians. They use music and sometimes oratory to preserve and sustain people’s consciousness of the past, a past that stretches back to the 13th century when the Manding king Sunjata Keita consolidated the vast Empire of Mali, covering much of West Africa. The stories of these glory days and the times since remain important touchstones for people today, not only for the Manding, but for many citizens of Mali, Guinea, Gambia, and Senegal. So to be born to a distinguished jeli family in Kita is already an auspicious beginning.

Mamadou’s father Djelimory played the kora, the jeli’s venerable 21-string harp. He was widely known as N’fa Diabate, performing in the Instrumental Ensemble of Mali and recording on the National Radio of Mali. At the age of four, Mamadou went to live with his father in Bamako, where the Ensemble was based. When it came time for him to return to Kita and go to school, Mamadou knew that the kora was his destiny. His father had taught him how to play the instrument, and from there he listened and watched and devoted himself to practicing the kora, to the point that his mother worried that he was not concentrating enough on school. When she took it away, it only reduced his interest in studying, and he quickly resorted to making his own kora so he could continue.

Before long, Mamadou left school and began playing kora for local jeli singers, and traveling throughout the region to play at the ceremonies where modern jelis ply their trade, mostly weddings and baptisms. When he was fifteen, Mamadou won first prize for his kora playing in a regional competition and instantly became something of a local celebrity. The next year, he went to Bamako, and under the tutelage of his famous kora playing cousin, Toumani Diabate, he worked the jeli circuit, backing singers at neighborhood weddings and baptisms and entertaining the powerful at the city’s posh Amitié Hotel. Toumani gave his cousin the nickname “Djelika Djan” meaning “Tall Griot,” a reference to Mamadou’s impressive physical stature. The name has stuck.

I must also admit ignorance of the kora and so I quote from the Wikipedia entry on it:

The kora (French: cora) is a 21 string harp-lute used extensively by Mandingo peoples in West Africa.

It uses a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin as a resonator, and has a notched bridge like a lute or guitar. The sound of a kora is like a harp, though when played in the traditional style, it bears a closer resemblance to flamenco guitar techniques. The player uses only thumb and index finger of both hands to pluck the strings in polyrhythmic patterns. Ostinato riffs (“Kumbeng”) and improvised solo runs (“Biriminting”) are played at the same time by skilled players.

You can see Diabate playing the kora in the photos here.

The music is tranquil and hypnotic and I think it provides a nice contrast to what I’ve posted here lately as well as to the music that’s been gracing my stereo recently. Unfortunately, the notes I got along with this show contained only the source of the recording. This means that I don’t have any song titles nor correct spellings of side musicians’ names and instruments played other than the kora.

The performance was recorded on 20 July 2002 at the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music & Dance in Trumansburg, New York. Diabate played the Infield Stage. There are 7 songs and they were recorded from the soundboard so it’s a nice quality show. Enjoy!

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Mamadou Diabate

(Photo by Angel Romero.)

Related posts:

1. 21st Annual Midwest Sacred Harp Singing Convention
2. Show #51: The Heathens