Post-Colonial African Groove of the Week #2 – Djata
Posted on | September 4, 2009 | 1 Comment
For the second Post-Colonial African Groove tune, I’ve selected a track from Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux. This was a fantastic band, really one of the finest electric bands to emerge in Post-Colonial West Africa, which was formed in 1969 to play at the government Motel in Bamako. This paralleled a slightly earlier band, also government sponsored, the Rail Band, which played at Bamako’s train station. These two groups, along with National Badema du Mali (a slightly lesser-known group) were the main government sponsored groups which emerged post-independence as a means of fostering a new national pride and culture. This was not exclusive to Mali, there were similar groups in Guinea, the Gambia, and elsewhere.
The track I’ve chosen today is from a disc which was actually recorded in the U.S. in 1981, featuring the great Salif Keita on vocals and Manfila Kante on guitar (both pictured above). Keita, an albino, was rejected by his family as a result of his skin color and as a result of chosing a career as a musician, as his family does not belong to the traditional heredetary musician pool. (More on that here, if you are interested). He first gained success singing with the Rail Band, then left to join the Ambassadeurs, and later to forge an enormously successful international solo career singing highly electrified dance music, though he has recently returned to a more acoustic setting. The guitarist, Manfila Kante, was a balafon player who became one of the most important electric guitarists in West Africa due to his unique adaptation of traditional Mandinka vocabulary onto the instrument. OK, enough text, here’s the track! (click to listen):
Apologies for the sound quality, this one comes to me via a bootleg MP3 CD of LP transfers brought back from Mali by a friend of mine. Anyway, this is a shining example of Keita’s epic vocal style and of the Ambassadeurs trademark sound, light and somewhat swinging but still very groovy and, above all, effortlessly presenting traditional Mandinka material in a modern, electric context without sounding forced or unnatural. In his book Mande Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), Eric Charry has transcribed Manfila Kante’s solo from this track as “an oustanding example of the Mandenization of the guitar.” He goes on to note:
Throughout his solo Kante alternates between static repeated acoompaniment-like patterns [...] and more dynamic descending melodic lines. This kind of juxtaposition of two types of playing, as well as the balance and pacing between them, is [...] typical of bala [balafon] playing. The pattern he plays [at 2:48] is particularly interesting. The melodic line groups into four beats of six pulses each , but the constant upper B-flats accent the offbeats of groups of six beats of four pulses each [phew, did you follow that one?]. This is a brilliant, subtle combination of cross-rhythm (four beats in the space of six beats) with constant offbeats, again a typically Mandinka texture featuring a kind of pluyrhythm that can be created between two instruments, between two fingers or two hands playing the same instrument, or even with a single plectrum.
This fits in with my discussion of kumbego and birimitingo in kora music in my previous post as well, and it’s great to have such a fine example of the same concept in a more modern context.
Enjoy the track, and as a bonus for having read through my somewhat intellectual description of this killing tune, here is another fantastic selection from the Ambassadeurs, courtesy of World Service, one of my favorite blogs which you should all check out to get your weekly dose of African music. This one features more fantastic vocals from Keita and another slammin Kante solo, as well as some great horn work and even classic dance moves and bell bottoms! Enjoy…
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October 23rd, 2009 @ 11:30 am
[...] who along with Manfila Kante (who I mentioned and featured in the second Post-Colonial Groove post here), as been one of the main creators of the Mandinka guitar sound, translating many traditional [...]