Djaje Traore continues the long, long family tradition making Malian music.
While there are 40 active languages in Mali, and while French is the main colonial language, about 80% of Malians are able to communicate in Bambara. In this video, Djaje Traore joins us from Bamako, Mali, singing in Bambara — “Le monde a changé.”
Let’s listen to Malian master Sibo Bangoura….
In class this week met griots from Mali, the “praise singers” who sang reverential accounts of their nation’s great kings. In this video, kora and djembe player Sibo Bangoura takes us, in a TED talk, deeper into the tradition.
In class this week we experience the tradition of Malian griots, legendary royal musicians who sang the praises of Malian kings. In this video I introduced the concept of griots to kids in my daughter’s elementary school class at the Philadelphia Montessori Charter School and asked them to write their own songs of praise for their friends. As you see they did, delightfully.
Global musicians regard Malian blues legend Ali Farka Touré as one of the most important guitar players of all time, noting his residence at the crossroads between traditional African and American musics.
In particular, blues from Mali fuses plaintive narrative with the shuffling rhythm that’s the staple of American bayou blues. Ali Farka Touré’s 1994 CD with American guitarist Ry Cooder, “Talking Timbuktu,” demonstrated his blues prowess as well as his ability to blend disparate African cultures into a unified African statement–Touré sings in 11 languages on the album.
In this week’s online class for kids we visit Mali, a vast desert land which, a thousand so years ago, was home to a series of empires that controlled the strategically significant trans-Saharan trade route. Today Mali is at more of a metaphorical crossroads — torn between modernization in its cities and Islamic fundamentalism which holds strong sway in the North. In class we put politics aside and focus on Mali’s music, which sounds both ancient and modern, and resolutely regal. Let’s go!
Fatoumata Diawara, born in Ivory Coast to a family from Mali, may have first made her mark as an actress, but has hit her groove on the international scene as a soulful pan-African singer.
An engaging performer, she charms and convinces with her vibrant vocals, inspiring everyone to dance. Enjoy!!!
We end our week’s tour of Mali with Tinariwen, geniuses of the “desert blues.”
The founding songwriter of Tinariwen is Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, son of Tuareg rebel, formed the band living with other Malian Tuaregs in refugee camps and in exile in Algeria and Libya. The band rose to international prominence in the late ’90s and have brought music from the Sahara, and awareness of Tuareg music and culture, to international audiences ever since. Tinariwen is definitely one of All Around This World’s favorites — watch this video and you’ll start to see why.
.
Sona Jobarteh makes magical music for us on the kora….
The kora, a 21-stringed harp, its body fashioned from a halved calabash covered with cow hide, is one of West Africa’s most glorious traditional instruments. While musicians from Mali as Toumani Diabaté are particularly crazy about the kora, in this video Gambian kora master Sona Jabarteh, descendant of one of West Africa’s most prominent kora-paying families, shows us that non-Malians can wow us too.
