Si Naani

Toumani Diabaté of Mali is routinely referred to as the greatest living kora musician.  He is certainly the most adventurous and broadly experienced.  Who else has collaborated with Taj Mahal, Bjork, Roswell Rudd, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Salif Keita, the rappers of Les Escrocs, and the new flamencans of Ketama?  But beyond the star studded resume, what really makes Toumani the greatest is the virtuosity and creative brilliance he displays on the venerable 21-string harp of his Mande ancestors.  And nowhere does he show that better than on his new solo CD, The Mande Variations. 

It’s the way on the CD’s opening track, “Si Naani,” Toumani begins with the simple vamp from the griot love song “Musu Maramba,” and unfolds it through a dazzling series of ever more beautiful elaborations, ultimately arriving at the Fula griot piece “Njaaro.”  This ten-and-a-half minute journey is as eloquent and coherent as a story told by a master, and unfolding on three levels—melody, harmonic accompaniment, and a most articulate bass.  The Fula end point provides a blissful musical resolution, and also underscores the song’s unsung message of praise for Malian Minister of Affairs, Moctar Ouane, a Fula.  In pioneering the kora as a solo instrument, Toumani removed it from the conventions of griot performance, where a vocalist is central, but he has not removed the underlying intent of griot art—praise of great men and women, and the preservation of history.  Toumani just manages to do this without using words.

The Mande Variations bookends Toumani’s kaleidoscopic recording career by returning to the solo format of his 1988 debut, Kaira.  This was a brilliant player twenty years ago, but listening to the two side by side, it is possible to appreciate how much more brilliant he has become.  Listening to the two performance of “Diaraby”—a kind of fetish song for Toumani, reconceptualized for nearly all of his different album projects—one really appreciates the way in which Mande pieces are living entities that mature and grow in the hands of players like Touimani.  The new performances, called “Cantelowes,” is deep and bracing, flying through the song’s conventional melodies and riffs and forging headlong into rich, new melodic territory.

Similarly, Toumani revisits the Gambian kora classic, “Alla l’a ke,” playing it at a new, furious tempo, loaded with tricky cross rhythms and with energy and density of ideas no kora player I know can match.  By renaming the song “Kaounding Cissoko,” Toumani again asserts griot intent, honoring the great kora player Kaounding Cissoko, who performed with Senegalese star Baaba Maal, and who died in 2003.  In his own excellent notes on the songs, Toumani explains each performance, including source pieces and his purposeful renamings.  He also discusses tunings, and identifies which pieces are played on the traditional kora, and which on the fabulous “machine-head kora” built for him by an Australian named Jason Burns.  This is a hypnotic masterpiece, and a landmark release for, yes, the greatest living kora musician.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre for www.afropop.org