FantasieToumani Diabate

"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond between nations, races, and states, who are strangers in many ways; she may unite what is disunited and bring peace to what is hostile."

Dr. Max Bendiner

West Africa Contemporary Music

African Music

Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a distinct history from sub-Saharan African music traditions.

North Africa is the seat of the Mediterranean culture, including ancient Egypt and Carthage, civilizations with strong ties to the ancient Near East and which have heavily influenced the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. North Africa was later conquered by the Arabs, who established the region as the Maghreb of the Arab world.

The musical genres of the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa, have close ties with Middle Eastern music.

Eastern Africa and the islands of the Indic Ocean, have received some influences from the Arabic, Indian, Indonesian and Polynesian music. However, the original musical traditions are based on the culture of the sub-saharan tribes speaking the Níger and Congo indigenous languages.

Southern, Central and West Africa are similarly in the broad Sub-Saharan musical tradition, but draw their ancillary influences primarily from Western Europe and North America.

The music and dance forms of the African diaspora include African American music and many Caribbean and Latin American genres, such as samba, rumba, salsa, soca, calypso and zouk, which were founded to varying degrees on the music of enslaved Africans, who with his traditional innate ability for dancing and playing musical instruments, strongly influenced popular music of many countries of the world.

North Africa

Western Africa

NiloValley

Eastern Africa

CentralAfrica

Southern Africa

Horn ofAfrica

Contemporary West Africa & Morocco Musicians

Majid Bekkas Juldeh Camara

Toumani Diabate

Foday Musa Suso Muhamadou Salieu Suso

GuembriThree strings bassBajo con 3 cuerdas

The Oud is one stringed instrument characterized by a round-backed body with either one or three holes, and a headstock that is bent back from the neck.

String Musical Instruments of Morocco

The Riti is a single-string fiddle of Senegal and Gambia. It is played to accompany praise singing and acrobatic dancing, usually together with several calabashes, which are used as percussion instruments.

The Kora is a harp built from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator with a long hardwood neck. The skin is supported by two handles that run under it, and it supports a notched double free-standing bridge. Traditional koras feature 21 strings, eleven played by the left hand and ten by the right.

Riti

Kora

String Musical Instruments of West Africa Especially popular in Senegal, Gambia and Mali

Majid Bekkas, Oud and Guembri virtuoso, guitar professor and singer, has long been a star in his home country Morocco.

Over the last few years, he has found his way into the European jazz scene through his collaborations with Archie Shepp, Louis Sclavis, Flavio Boltro and Klaus Doldinger.

Abdelmajid Bekkas was born and still lives in Salé, Morocco. He studied classical guitar and oud at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in Rabat and learnt Gnawa music through the teachings of the master Ba Houmane. Gnawa appeared in the 16th century. During the conquest of Sudan, Ahmed El Mansour Dahbi set up the first trading and cultural links between Timbuktu, near Zagora where Bekkas comes from, and Marrakech.

ChabkrouMajid Bekkas

The secular music is still considered the "healer of souls" from Essaouira to Marrakech, easily understandable when you listen to the spellbinding sound of Bekkas´ voice, guembri and guitar. Like a watermark, the mystery of Africa can be felt in the background, alongside the blues.

Gnawa´s intact purity is the essence of the authenticity. By claiming to be part of Africa, the mother of the blues and its numerous offspring such as funk, Bekkas is placing Gnawa in its primary dimension. By opening the spectrum, including elements of contemporary western music, Bekkas attains a universal status that is nurtured by the path he travelled.

These include: jazz, alongside pioneers such as Peter Brötzmann, Archie Shepp, Flavio Boltro, Louis Sclavis.

Bekkas´ openness and ability to balance modernism and memory with a rare talent that knews no compromise, frees the music from the stamp of time. The memory is that of pain and wisdom, of songs that come from the slaves of Africa.

His blind father received the gift of music from forest spirits who took the use of his eyes in return. Playing the Riti, a one- stringed fiddle, he participated as a griot in traditional Fula society.

Camara has been recognized as the leading Riti player in the world. Camara has played with Ifang Bondi, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Batanai Marimba, Knut Reiersrud, kora player Seckou Keita and Tunde Jegede's African Classical Ensemble, where in 2009 he performed at St. Denis Cathedral in Paris which included Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabate, Kasse Mady Diabate, Sambou Susso and the Brodsky Quartet.

More recently he has established a successful partnership with the famous rock guitar player Justin Adams, releasing their collaborative albums "Soul Science", "Tell No Lies" in May 2009 and "The Trance Sessions" EP in February 2010.

Juldeh Camara

Born in 1966 in Basse, West Africa, Juldeh Camara is a Gambian griot and master musician.

A griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet and musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition.

NightwalkJuldeh Camara & Justin Adams

Toumani Diabaté was born in Mali, August 10, 1965. He is a master kora player.

In addition to performing the traditional music of Mali, he has also been involved in cross-cultural collaborations with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles.He has collaborated with flamenco group Ketama, forming a combined group known as Songhai and releasing two recordings.

Diabaté comes from a long family tradition of kora players including his father Sidiki Diabaté, who recorded the first ever kora album in 1970.

His family's oral tradition tells of 71 generations of musicians preceding him in a patrilineal line. His cousin Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora player to come from a Griot family.

Kala DjulaToumani Diabate & Ali Farka Toure

In September 2005, he released the album “In the Heart of the Moon”, for which he collaborated with Ali Farka Touré.

The album went on to win the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music Album.

On July 25, 2006 he released the album “Boulevard de l'Indépendance”, recorded with his Symmetric Orchestra.

The Symmetric Orchestra led by Toumani Diabaté is composed of musicians (mostly griots) from the across the old Mande Empire of west Africa, who play a mix of traditional instruments including the kora, djembe, balafon and bolombatto, as well as modern ones like the guitar and electronic keyboard.

Foday Musa Suso, was born in Sarre Hamadi Village, Wuli District, in the Upper River Division of eastern Gambia.

Foday is a musician and composer. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a griot, oral historian and musician of the Mandingo people who live in several west African nations. Suso is a direct descendent of Jali Madi Wlen Suso, the griot who invented the kora over four centuries ago.

He spent his childhood in a traditional Gambian village, in a household filled with kora music. Though his father was a master kora player, in griot tradition a father does not teach his own children the instrument.

Ocean WaveFoday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette

When Foday was 9, his father sent him to live with master kora teacher Sekou Suso in the village of Pasamasi, Wuli District. He trained with Sekou Suso until the age of 18. Suso's primary instrument is the kora, but he also plays the gravikord and several other instruments.

Suso emigrated to Chicago in 1977, being one of the first jalis to relocate to North America. Once in Chicago, he formed the Mandingo Griot Society, which played fusion music around the world.

He has performed with Philip Glass, Bill Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, Jack DeJohnette, Ginger Baker, Paul Simon and the Kronos Quartet. He has contributed to music for the Olympic Games in 1984 and 2004. His electrified kora can also be heard on several tracks on Herbie Hancock's 1984 electro-funk album Sound-System.

The following year, Suso and Hancock came out with another album, “Village Life”, that consists entirely of duets between them, Hancock on synthesizer and Suso on kora, talking drums, and vocals.

Suso graduated from high school in The Gambia, West Africa. Speaks English fluently and Mandingo, Fula, Wolof, Sarahulay and some German.

Before settling in the United States in 1989, Suso performed widely throughout Africa and Europe. Salieu Suso is the leader of the “Jaliya Kafo Extended Family Music Ensemble”, and is a leader in the nation’s rapidly growing African music scene. Suso actively freelances with other groups

Muhamadou Salieu Suso, was born into a family of farmers and traditional Gambian musicians/historians that extends back nearly 1,000 years.

He was trained to play the 21 stringed Kora (West African Harp) beginning at age 8 by his father, renowned Kora player Alhaji Musa Makang Suso.

He is a descendent of JaliMady Wulayn Suso, the inventor of the Kora.

SutukungMohamadou Salieu Suso

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AVM 08.09.2012Other Biographies at :www.slideshare.net/aavmvazquez