Pages tagged “mali”

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Tinariwen: Even Nomads Get the Blues

For an American listener, the music of the Saharan band Tinariwen stirs deep echoes. It sounds so much like the oldest recordings of American blues that it seems to come from a place where the tree of African music split between those who were stolen away to the Western Hemisphere and those who stayed behind.   read more

The Kora: A Primer

The kora is a West African harp with 21 strings and a large calabash gourd body. According to Eric Charry, a historian of West African music...  read more

African Queen: On the Ground in Mali with Oumou Sangare

They’re really on us now. Motorbikes...  read more

Toumani Diabaté: The Mandé Variations

Mali’s reigning musical magician uncorks another genie from his bottleIf the only reason Western pop fans know anything about Malian music or genius-level kora player Toumani Diabaté is because of world-beat hitchhikers such as Blur’s Damon Albarn (whose 2002 Oxfam benefit release Mali Music includes collaborations with Diabaté and several of his master-level countrymen), then shame on us all.  The kora is a 21-string harp fashioned from an African bottle gourd, cut in half and then fitted with cow skin to create a resonator. Players at Diabaté’s level of accomplishment are capable of making the instrument sound as much like...  read more