Teningnini Damba as daughter of Bazoumana Sissoko , the old lion, had his legacy to defend
but in Aye Woyo she is crafting some truly brilliant -and addictive-originals
after-all Teningnini is simply great as herself-a lioness indeed....
hello again
djeliya and spoken word on a magic carpet woven with ngoni and guitars
from one of the greats,Cheick Fantamadi Diabaté dit Fimani,
with Adama Kouyaté djembe and Drissa Diabaté on kora....bliss
Not all the Diabate from Kela become famous artists, but among every generation there are some who are successful. The patrilineage to which Siramori belongs seems to have a special talent for music. Her grandfather Kelabalaba is considered to be the first Diabate ever to be the official spokesman in the septennial recitation of the Sunjata epic. His four sons have inherited this talent . Siramori's father, Bintufaama, was a renowned player of the ngoni, the traditional Mande lute. The people in Kela still mention him as a great artist, and his ngoni is said to have continued to play even after he had stopped playing it. Siramori's agemates El Haji Bala and El Haji Yamudu both had impressive careers as musicians. They both had their own music group with which they toured Mande. Among Siramori's classificatory grandchildren, Kasemadi (aka Kasse Mady) is by far the most famous. Kassemadi sang in the 1980s with bands like National Badema A and B. Today he lives in Paris and his records are sold all over the world. His younger brother Lanfia is not only a fine ngoni player, but has also an outstanding voice and features in the Bajourou trio. In the 1980s Lanfia was the singer of Mali's legendary Rail Band.
Some of Siramori's children have "inherited" their parents' talent. Siramori was married to Nankoman Kouyate, a balafon player who played in the group in which Siramori was a singer and dancer. Her two daughters Sanudje and Bintan are considered to be the inheritors of Siramori's secrets. Sanudje is a professional singer, who alternates stays in Bamako and Paris. She has made one cassette in Paris, with Ibrahim Sylla, the producer for many Malian artists. Sanudje's sister Bintan has married a Diabate from Kela and she has acquired a central role in music performances in Kela. Two of Siramori's sons are also active as professional musicians. Her youngest son, Lansine Kouyate, is a talented balafon player who played on Salif Keita's latest album, Folon. Her second son, Sidiki, is a guitar player who travels through the Mande region with his electric band. His home base is his mother's compound in Kangaba.
Siramori was first of all a descendant of the famous Diabaté griots of Kela, a village at the banks of the Djolibariver (aka Niger), 100 kilometers southwest of Bamako. She was born around 1925, the daughter of Bintufaama Diabate .
Being a Diabaté from Kela more or less shaped her life. The Diabaté have long been considered
the keepers of the "true" version of the Sunjata epic and Kela is a so-called "school of oral tradition ". Siramori Diabaté was rolled in this tradition, and therefore she stayed in Kangaba but on the other hand she actively participated in urban life in Bamako.
She appealed to a new generation that derived its identity primarily from being citizens of the nation state of Mali, and less from its ethnic background. Siramori is generally acknowledged as a person who bridged the old and the new and her songs are appreciated by all kinds of people, whatever their age or ethnic background .This is a remarkable achievement, and Y. F. Koné does not exaggerate when hè writes:
Rare are the jaliw who know how to speak to all Malians in their diversity Siramory Diabaté has managed this....
Samba Touré grew up in Dabi, a small village in northern Mali,
his father passed away just before his birth, leaving his mother to raise him alongside his brother,
Ibrahima ‘Bouri’ Séré. Although they could not afford formal education,
the brothers were surrounded by music and his mother was one of the first women
to sing with the young Ali Farka Touré at the Biennale Festival in Mali.
inspired by the Congolese guitar groups,began singing and playing guitar in a band called Farafina Lolo
(Africa Star), with his brother Bouri on the drums and Baba Simagah on the bass guitar,in the mid-1990s, Samba briefly joined another group, Super Lolo.
It was Ali Farka who encouraged Samba to look to his roots and establish
his own identity rather than following passing music fads and Samba Touré formed Fondo.
Fondo includes Zoumana Tereta, a master of the sokou,
Oumar Barou Diallo on bass guitar, Hamma Sankaré on calabash and Bouri on the drums.
The youngest member of the band, Djimé Sissoko, is the little brother of Baba Sissoko,
and can be heard on the ngoni and tamani .
Together, they have played at numerous African festivals, with the bassist Baba Simagah
and the conga player Oumar Touré (who was a longtime player with Ali Farka Touré) joining the line-up.
Fondo was produced by Ali Farka. in 2004.
Music, song and poetry occupy an extremely large and fundamental place in Tuareg society. In all the chaos that this century and its struggles have caused, they have remained a constant mark of Tuareg identity. The Tuareg confederations have as a whole certain musical practices in common, as well as the rules that guide them and the themes of the poems that are sung. Their music is characterised by the importance given to the voices and by a reduced number of instruments. Their social structure has traditionally had a great influence on their music; only women of the noble or the vassal tribes were once permitted to play the imzad . the small one-stringed fiddle that is the symbol of`Tuareg society, but now any female musician can teach the instrument to any woman who so desires.
The imzad is made from half a calabash or from a wooden bowl that is covered with goatskin and to which is also attached a neck that supports one string of horsehair. The imzad players were greatly renowned and could play many melodies, these evoking past events or the high deeds of a hero whose name they bore by the richness of their variations; they could also accompany a man’s singing and. on occasion, also displayed therapeutic powers by curing melancholy and apathy. Good players of the imzad are today becoming ever rarer and its repertoire is inexorably becoming smaller. Lala, the imzad player of the Tartit group is very often happy simply to accompany the other musicians and the songs, keeping herself out of the limelight. The other instrument that is played exclusively by women is the tindé made from a small wooden mortar that the women use to grind grains and which been covered with goatskin. The Kel Antessar have two types of tindé , a small (takabart) and a large (aghelaba), whose higher and lower sounds complement each other. Even although it had only until recently been the case that women from the servant tribes were the only ones authorized to play the tindé, now all women may play it. performing popular songs, making up new words to classic melodies to evoke the memory of a hero, encouraging the men, boasting of the women`s merits, or even giving themselves over to bewitching songs that imitate the rhythm of a camel's walk. The percussive sounds of the tindé and the soloist’s song are generally accompanied by a female chorus and by hand clapping on the off-beat.
The imzad and the tindé are both instruments that are well adapted to the nomad life. Both are made from everyday objects, a gourd and a mortar respectively, and they can once again be used for their normal functions after their use as musical instruments. The Tuareg do not, however, have a monopoly on such instruments; the Haoussa and the Djerma have one-stringed fiddles that resemble the imzad and many of the African peoples use percussion instruments related to the tindé. The Tuaregs have therefore been either a constant influence on or have been constantly influenced by the peoples that lived around them. The traces of these intercultural borrowings are particularly visible with the Kel Antessar. They were amongst the first Tuaregs to use the tehardant, the three-stringed lute that resemble
instruments used by the Songhais, the Peuls and the Moors. A permanent instrument, the tehardant consists of a canoe-shaped wooden resonance chamber covered with goatskin. A neck supports three strings that were once horsehair but are now synthetic. The tehardunt is, together with their flute, the only Tuareg instrument that is played by men. Amongst the Kel Antessan the tehardant is played by professional musicians, although this circumstance does not occur in the other confederations. Amano ag Issa belongs to the aggou caste (plural: aggouten), one that corresponds to the griots of the settled peoples. The aggouten belong to the most extended part of the inhadan, the smith‘s or artisan’s caste. The majority of poets and raconteurs traditionally meet at the homes of the above; they are exempt from observing certain rules of behavior and they can skillfully handle criticism and provocation. They are sometimes distrusted and often feared, notably because of the power that as smiths they have over fire. The Tuaregs of other areas have also adopted not only the music and texts of the tehardunt but also the songs:of the aggouten. satirical and critical of` the powers that be; it is now therefore possible to hear tehardant music also in Gao and in Niamey.
Certain pieces played by the Tartit group mingle the sound of the tehardant and the tindé with the voice of a male or female soloist, with Amano’s commentaries and with a female chorus. Such pieces are played on festive occasions such as marriages, children’s ceremonies, various tributes, and also in honour of a woman who has just divorced. The men and women dance seated cross legged opposite each other, moving and twisting their arms and their hands, playing with glances and being free with their smiles. The music provided by the tehardant and the imzad that now supports the tales describing historical incidents will later also be performed in circumstances that will inspire more gravity and calm during assemblies or talks.
The Tartit group presented Tuareg music from Mali for the first time in Europe during the festival Wir da Femmes in Liege, Belgium in December 1995. The music that they presented at that time was, however, only a part of the rich repertoire of the Kel Antessar and of the Tuaregs in general. This patrimony in perpetual change, as the introduction to the tehardant has shown, is today menaced in part. The Tuaregs are living through one of the most tragic periods of their history, with droughts, wars, exodus and exile, settlement, refugee camps and shanty towns, "Will they ever be able to find their own path again without either losing their reason or the rhythm of their rightness“, asked the French ethnomusicologist Bernard Lorta-Jacob.... from the notes I have expressed my admiration for the magical ensemble of Tartit in the past, I will do it one more time. let's listen to them in their first and best recording so far (just imho) many thanks to ibn chaaba photos of Tartit by awel haouati
He is tall and wiry, a quiet man, his face decorated with tribal tattoos,
his compound small, but in a continuous process of rebuilding, and he has arranged small rooms to rent out, living with one of his wives and their children in a small room at the corner of the compound.
He is an excellent musician and has from time to time been part of traveling groups of singers and instrumentalists. He is a Jare, the Serehule word for the West African singer/historian.
*
"A man must be useful and always know his duty. This song is always played for men who are brave and of use to others, not for men who can be trifled with. I am calling for men who can save the lives of other men whenever there is trouble, when there is hunger for those who can stand and fight for their rights. This song is for those men."from Nege Sirimang
latest obsession (and what else are blogs about,other than our obsessions?)
djembe master Ibrahima Sarr and the amazing Danaya company of singers ,dancers & percussionists:
Ibrahima SARR - Djembé solo, direction Adama COULIBALY - Chant et donso ngoni Fatime DIABATE - Chant et danse Seïba SISSOKO - Djeli ngoni Moussa DIABATE - Bala Fassara SACKO dit "Niangri" - Chant et doundoun solo Gaoussou KOUYATÉ dit "Garçon" - Djembé solo et accompagnement Ismaïla KOUYATÉ dit "Kenieba” - Djembé, doundoun solo et accompagnement Brahima Coulibaly - Danse et konkoni
She appealed to a new generation that derived its identity primarily from being citizens of the nation state of Mali, and less from its ethnic background. Siramori is generally acknowledged as a person who bridged the old and the new and her songs are appreciated by all kinds of people, whatever their age or ethnic background .This is a remarkable achievement, and Y. F. Koné does not exaggerate when hè writes:
The other instrument that is played exclusively by women is the tindé made from a small wooden mortar that the women use to grind grains and which been covered with goatskin. The Kel Antessar have two types of tindé , a small (takabart) and a large (aghelaba), whose higher and lower sounds complement each other. Even although it had only until recently been the case that women from the servant tribes were the only ones authorized to play the tindé, now all women may play it. performing popular songs, making up new words to classic melodies to evoke the memory of a hero, encouraging the men, boasting of the women`s merits, or even giving themselves over to bewitching songs that imitate the rhythm of a camel's walk. The percussive sounds of the tindé and the soloist’s song are generally accompanied by a female chorus and by hand clapping on the off-beat.
They are sometimes distrusted and often feared, notably because of the power that as smiths they have over fire. The Tuaregs of other areas have also adopted not only the music and texts of the tehardunt but also the songs:of the aggouten. satirical and critical of` the powers that be; it is now therefore possible to hear
