Watch Ali Farka Touré perform "Savane" in Brussels

Ali Farka Touré's Savane album – featuring Bassekou Kouyate & Mama Sissoko – has just been reissued on vinyl by World Circuit. 

Bassekou Kouyaté & Habib Koité @ Toronto Centre For The Arts, Tuesday

Malian marvels Bassekou Koyaté and guitar griot Habib Koité join forces for a rare Toronto throwdown Tuesday night. 

Mali Blues screens @ Harbourfront's Studio Theatre, Sunday

Don't miss this rare opportunity to see the beautifully shot documentary Mali Blues at 4:30pm for free.

Happy Birthday Bassekou Kouyate!

Buena Vista Songhai Club

Although it wasn't widely reported at the time of Buena Vista Social Club's phenomenal success, the original concept that Ry Cooder and World Circuit founder Nick Gold had for the Havana recording was supposed to be an Africa-meets-Cuba cultural collision putting Malian guitar shaman Ali Farka Toure in the company of old-school Cuban son musicians.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the famed Egrem Studio – Ali Farka Toure missed his flight from Bamako for reasons which remain unclear to this day. Some say that as spiritual leader of his Niafunke village, he had to remain at home because of the looming threat of civil war spilling over into the region while others claim that Toure simply decided instead to accept a lucrative request to perform at a ceremonial function for one of his wealthy patrons. There's also a completely different narrative involving some mysterious visa mix-up but in any case, Toure was a no-show in Cuba.
With studio time already booked at Egrem, Cooder and Gold needed to come up with a back-up plan on the double which meant rooting around Havana for surviving stars of Cuba's pre-Castro golden era who still had their chops. Fortunately the flame keeper of Cuban son, Eliades Ochoa, had already tracked down the great Compay Segundo 10 years earlier and was regularly showcasing the cigar-puffing octogenarian in his Cuarteto Patria shows where his crowd-pleasing tune Chan Chan was a surefire showstopper. Right there, in Chan Chan's gently rolling Afro-Caribbean syncopation, you've got Buena Vista Social Club's sonic blueprint. While Cooder happily accepted the Buena Vista glory, the bit about the scrapped initial plan involving Toure was largely overlooked by the media much like the crucial role played by Ochoa in salvaging the project.

Now 13 years after the release of the Grammy winning Buena Vista Social Club album, it's payback time for Ocho and his Cuarteto Patria crew in the form of AfroCubism. Revisiting the Africa-meets-Cuba concept that had to be ditched earlier, Gold built the AfroCubism project upon the solid son foundation of Ochoa's group Cuarteto Patria with Malian superstars  Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyate and Rail Band guitar dazzler Djelimady Tounkara trading licks with the tres slinging Ochoa who shares vocal duties with veteran Las Maravillas de Mali singer Kassy Mady. It's a world music dream team like none other ever assembled. Imagine if LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and Kevin Garnett all joined Kobe Bryant on the Los Angeles Lakers and you'll get some idea of the dimensions of this thing.
Considering the serious string-bending talent involved, the decision to downplay the role of percussion makes perfect sense but as a consequence of having Cuarteto Patria's Jose Martinez, Jorge Maturell and Eglis Ochoa laying down the rhythms (bolstered by balafon boss Lassana Diabaté and Baba Sissoko on talking drums), the resulting self-titled AfroCubism (World CIrcuit) album is naturally going to sound more like a rootsy Cuban son recording than anything associated with Toumani Diabate or Bassekou Kouyate. Of course, if someone hears a familiar echo of the multi-million selling Buena Vista Social Club album in the new 14-track AfroCubism release, that isn't really such a bad thing, particularly from a marketing standpoint.
The typical challenge with these all-star sessions – particularly when the musicians involved have never seen each other before, much less played together – is creating a band-like vibe with a group of stellar soloists. No such problem here. Listening to the way everything on the AfroCubism album seems to seamlessly fit in place while effortlessly swinging so hard, you'd think these guys have been knocking around together in clubs for years. Luckily everyone participating in AfroCubism has been a dependable sideman during their career and well understands the value of working as a sympathetic accompanist when called upon. So the fact that the the sessions were cut live with the whole cast getting down together in one big room didn't pose a problem.

“It was as though the musicians had been holding back their ideas and energy for that moment,” says Gold, who produced the album with Buena Vista engineer Jerry Boys. “After we’d waited so long, it all came together remarkably easily and spontaneously. The group had never played together before but the music just poured out and it continued to flow over the next few days.”
That they were able to record 17 songs complete in just five days at that first session in Madrid back in 2008, with another nine finished at a second session, is a good indication of just how well they connected. You'll have a rare chance to see AfroCubism in action when they make their Canadian debut at Montreal's Métropolis (59 Ste. Catherine East) on Friday, November 5 at 8 pm. Advance tickets are $34.50 and will likely sell out quickly since it's AfroCubism's only scheduled date in Canada.   

AfroCubism (World Circuit)

Mali Cuba
Al vaivén de mi carreta
Karamo
Djelimady Rumba
La Culebra
Jarabi
Eliades Tumbao  27
Dakan
Nima Diyala
A la luna yo me voy
Mariama
Para los Pinares se va Montoro
Benséma
Guantanamera




An introduction to AfroCubism




AfroCubism's first day in the studio



LINKS
myspace http://www.myspace.com/afrocubism
label http://www.worldcircuit.co.uk/#Home
Nick Gold discusses AfroCubism on the BBC

Bassekou Kouyate and Tony Allen at Queen's Park... for free!

Since Sunjata Keita founded the Malian empire back in 1235 and declared that the ngoni would be the only instrument played in his court, there haven't been that many real innovations with the way the lute-like ancestor of the banjo is played in West Africa. That is, until Bassekou Kouyate came along and re-wrote the ngoni rule book.
Although the legendary Malian djéli Bazoumana Sissoko (1890-1987) from Segou – who composed what became the fledging Republic of Mali's national anthem in 1962 – is generally considered to be the greatest ngoni maestro that ever lived, he still plucked away in a soulfully slow style while seated just as his forebears had done. And over the course of seven centuries, the kora and more recently, the guitar have both eclipsed the ngoni as the axe of choice for aspiring young West African musicians relegating the ngoni to the background.
That all changed one night in the mid-80s when Kouyate, then gigging with the Rail Band,  finally got fed up with the group's guitarists enjoying all the female attention up front at Bamako's train station hot spot Buffet de la Gare. So he jury rigged a strap for his ngoni and moved into the spotlight and he's never looked back.
Kouyate, born into Mali's griot caste in the small village of Garana on the banks of the Niger River, was schooled in the cultural traditions of playing the four-stringed ngoni from age 12 by his father Moustafa Koyate. As his proficiency grew, the young Kouyate started experimenting with adding more strings to the consternation of his dad who bristled at the blasphemous concept.

Once the teenage Kouyete moved to Bamako however, his forward-looking approach to the ancient instrument earned him the respect of Mali's next generation of superstars, namely kora king Toumani "Too Much Money" Diabaté and guitar slinger Ali Farka Toure. It was actually Koyate's breakout appearance on the late great Toure's final studio album, 2006's Savane (World CIrcuit) that led to the recording of Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba's critically acclaimed 2007 debut Segu Blue (Out Here) which won the praise of everyone from Damon Albarn and Fatboy Slim to highly influential broadcaster Charlie Gillett.
Suddenly Bassekou Kouyate  was being hyped as "the Jimi Hendrix of ngoni" and soon Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal and Bono were ringing him for studio collaborations while other fan club members such as banjo boy Béla Fleck and Bill Frisell have been seen trying to jump on stage with Kouyate at every opportunity.
After even more effusive plaudits were heaped upon Kouyate's follow up release I Speak Fula, the once mighty mid-level indie label Sub Pop, which never before showed the slightest interest in anything remotely African sounding, jumped on the Ngoni Ba bandwagon by forming a world music subsidiary called Next Ambiance to issue I Speak Fula for the North American market.

While rhe Segu Blue album, produced by Lucy Duran with a low-key field recording vibe, focused more on Kouyate's traditional side, the super-charged I Speak Fula no longer denies the American influences – it revels in them. The album has clearly been designed to suit the tastes of the global roots music buyers as well as those of the Bonnaroo generation which might be a turn off for those wishing to hear the simple beauty of the ngoni but the amped up developments were inevitable. Considering Kouyate chose to call his band Ngoni Ba – which means "Big Ngoni" – rocking sports stadiums and open fields filled with muddied hordes was probably always part of the plan. And now he's living the dream.
You can see Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba on stage with the mildly annoying Béla Fleck as part of the Luminato Festival's free performance program (astutely assembled by Derek Andrews) at Queen's Park in Toronto on Saturday (June 12) from 1 pm until 11 pm. Also be sure to check out the kick-ass Rachid Taha at 4 pm, Mr. Something Something at 6:30 pm and don't dare miss Fela Kuti's Afrobeat engine Tony Allen at 7:30 pm with Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba closing the show starting at 9 pm. Once again, it's all FREE!

Rock the Casbah
1:00 pm - Lo'Jo (France)
2:00 pm - Maryem Tollar Ensemble
3:00 pm - Karim Saada (Monteal)
4:00 pm - Rachid Taha (Algeria)

An African Prom
6:30 pm - Mr. Something Something (Toronto)
7:30 pm - Tony Allen (Nigeria)
9:00 pm - Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba (Mali) with Bela Fleck's Africa Project (USA) 


Ngoni Fola by Bassekou Kouyate


LINKS
Bassekou Kouyate myspace http://www.myspace.com/bassekoukouyate
Luminato Festival 2010 http://www.luminato.com/2010/
Out Here Records http://www.outhere.de/
Sub Pop http://www.subpop.com/