As a follow-up to my last post, here's my analysis of a song by the Mandé supergroup, Djelika. Djelika (also the name of their sole album) was composed of Toumani Diabaté on kora, Kélétigui Diabaté on balafon, and Bassekou Kouyaté on n'goni. These are the three traditional melody instruments of Mandé jeliw, played with great skill by some of Mali's greatest musicians and recorded for this album with perfect fidelity. The musical interplay amongst the three is careful and subtle, but perfectly comprehensible with a little explanation and some careful listening. I've linked to a youtube video of the track below, but if you enjoy the music, I strongly recommend buying the full album which, in addition to seven group tracks, also includes the excellent solo kora track "Cheikh Oumar Bah" (actually the traditional Mandé tune "Lamban" played in an alternate key).
"Kandjoura" is a version of the well-known Mandé song "Tonya Le" or "It's the truth!" in Mandékan, the dominant language in and around Kita (the hometown of both Toumani Diabaté and Kélétigui Diabaté). The song begins with an introduction, in this case a call and response melody involving all three instruments. It's also common for just a single instrument to play the introduction. The introduction (in my experience) is often written by the musician(s) playing it. This gives a chance to the musicians to put their own spin on a song by adding an entirely new melody; essentially, it's another way to show off musical skill.
Around 0:12, the song begins to take shape. Keletigui takes the lead, playing a strong accompaniment pattern that shows the basic melody of the song, while Toumani and Bassekou play minimalist backup that accents Keletigui's playing without being true accompaniments.
Around 0:31, Keletigui effortlessly lifts himself out of the accompaniment pattern he had been playing and begins a short improvised solo, while Toumani and Bassekou support him with the same minimalist accompaniments. By 0:36 he's already back within the accompaniment, though he changes the pattern slightly, though the song remains recognizably the same.
At 0:43, Toumani begins adding short bursts of melody with his kora, accenting Keletigui's strong balafon accompaniment. These are fragments of kora accompaniment patterns, very recognizable around 0:57, which interlock perfectly with Keletigui's playing. By 1:25, he's back within the accompaniment, and Bassekou has his turn to do an improvised solo at 1:30. As he plays, Keletigui provides the accompaniment, while Toumani essentially just strums the kora to add sonic interest.
There's no break between solos as Bassekou smoothly steps back into the accompaniment at 2:22 and Keletigui takes his first long solo. He's done by 2:53, and he and Toumani immediately begin mixing and matching different accompaniment patterns, giving both listeners and musicians a short break before Bassekou takes another solo at 3:30.
The song continues in this vein, with the musicians passing the solo "spotlight" amongst themselves and playing a variety of interlocking accompaniment patterns. As you can see, too, there are also short breaks where essentially the whole trio is playing nothing but accompaniment patterns. The overall feeling of the song is very organic, as opposed to the comparative rigidity of bluegrass or oldtime music, where one part follows another in lockstep. Since Mandé music usually has just one part, endlessly repeated, it flows quite differently and, as I hope I've shown, the logic is somewhat different, as well.
I'm off to Clifftop (the biggest oldtime festival) for a week; I'll be back next Monday with a post. Any questions or comments may be sent to waraden.diabate [at] gmail.com. Thanks for reading!
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