70 generations guide Mali kora master
Source: The Washington Times
70 generations guide Mali kora master
By Todd Pitman
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 6, 2007BAMAKO, Mali — On a moonlit African night in a leafy open-air bar, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate is peeling off an ethereal flood of kaleidoscopic riffs from a 21-string cow-skin covered harp like one his forefathers have played — for more than 70 generations.
Past a motley array of modern-day musicians and a phalanx of traditional drummers, a twirling 2 a.m. crowd of Bamako’s hippest has come to pay homage to a man many regard as the greatest kora player on the planet.
The music is East meets West, past meets present, a 21st century take on ancient Malian harmonies that smacks of flamenco, Far Eastern strings and the winding legato improvisations of free-form jazz.
For Mr. Diabate, the show is much more than just music: It’s the preservation of culture and tradition, a way to keep alive the spirit of the defunct Mande empire that once stretched across a vast swathe of West Africa.
Long before the region’s history was recorded in books, it was told through a caste of griots, musical storytellers. Seven centuries later, the songs are still sung over powerful rhythms and haunting pentatonic scales produced on traditional instruments like the banjo-esque ngoni, the wooden xylophone-like balafon, and kora players from Guinea to Niger.
“If West Africa was a living being, the griot would be the blood,” Mr. Diabate says over lunch at his Bamako home,
