À l'attaque!

Greetings from Mali!  

It's been a busy first week-and-a-bit.  I've reconnected with my old kora teacher, Toumani Kouyaté, and had several lessons with him.  I've also begun lessons with one of my primary n'goni teachers, Kélémonson Diabaté.  Kélémonson is a highly-regarded traditional n'goni player from Kita, the heartland of Mali's Mandé griot tradition.  He has also performed with Mali's Orchestre Nationale "A," a government-sponsored griot orchestra.  

Some of these terms could probably use some explanation.  The kora and the n'goni are traditional instruments of the Malian griot (the French term for the Bambara-language jeli).  Griots/jelis are oral historians, negotiators, counselors, musicians, praise-singers, orators, and wedding planners/officiators, among other roles. They all come from specific families (Kouyaté, Diabaté, and Sissoko being some of the most famous); as such, griots are often referred to as a sort of caste.  Not every Diabaté or Kouyaté is necessarily a griot, but it's impossible to become a griot if you're not born into one of the families.  Also, although griots are not the only people making music in Mali, they're far and away the dominant ones, so there's an interesting power dynamic between these semi-"official" musicians and the non-official "folk" variety.  There are also popular rap and reggae artists who are not part of the griot caste, too.  I'll try to illuminate the Malian music scene as I go along, but I readily admit to not understanding a lot of what's happening, despite being in the middle of it!

Instrument-wise, the kora is a twenty-one-stringed harp with two rows of strings (see pic below).  The n'goni is a four-stringed lute and a probable ancestor of the American banjo (see pic).  Modern n'gonis can have as many as eight strings, depending on the player.  I'll spend some time laying out each instrument in detail in some later posts.  For the moment, I'll just say that as a banjo player, the n'goni makes a lot more sense to me than the kora, but I'm trying to learn both.

Kélémonson Diabaté and his n'goni

Toumani Kouyaté

A frontal view of the kora

My Fulbright project is to study two different playing regional styles of the n'goni, those of Kita and Ségou.  I'm most familiar with that of Kita since my first n'goni teacher, Cheick Hamala Diabaté, is from there.  However, the Ségou style is also pretty interesting (lots of pentatonic songs, for one thing), and much less well-known than the Kita style.  So, hopefully I can make some useful comparisons and bring back some knowledge that no one outside of W. Africa has figured out yet.  

In the meantime, there's plenty of work to do.  Kélémonson will be in the neighboring country of Guinea for the next week or so, so I'll have time to work on the stuff I've learned so far and maybe transfer some of it to the banjo, as well.  I've also organized all of my old field recordings (I have thirty hours' worth or so) by song, so I'm going to sit down and try to drill myself on which accompaniments and melodies go with which song.  Next week, I'll post a recording of Toumani playing variations on a traditional Malian melody.  Stay tuned!

The masters face off

Questions, comments may be sent to waraden.diabate [at] gmail.com.