Musician Toumani Diabaté of Mali and his 21-string kora, photographed at WOMAD — the World of Music, Arts and Dance pageant held yearly in the UK. Diabaté died on July 19 at age 58.
Judith Burrows/Getty Pictures/Hulton Archive
disguise caption
toggle caption
Judith Burrows/Getty Pictures/Hulton Archive
“He performed these 21 strings with love.”
That is the nice American banjo participant Bela Fleck speaking about his duets with Toumani Diabaté of Mali — together with the crowd-pleaser “Dueling Banjos.”
Fleck referred to as him “one of many best accompanists I’ve ever performed with.”
It is one among many heartfelt tributes to Diabaté, who died of kidney failure on July. Diabaté was 58.
His demise reverberated all through the world, with many musicians expressing how profoundly his life had impacted them.
“Toumani was a guardian of our tradition, but additionally a daring innovator who by no means stopped pushing the boundaries of his craft,” Malian singer Oumou Sangaré wrote on her Instagram web page. “His departure leaves an immense void in our hearts, however his musical legacy will proceed to resonate inside us and encourage generations to return.”
Like father and mom….
Toumani Diabaté was born right into a centuries-old household of griot musicians, who’ve preserved the tales and traditions of Mali’s Mandé empire, as soon as the most important in West Africa, by means of their music. His father, Sidiki Diabaté, was the premier kora participant within the years following Mali’s 1960 independence from France, and his mom, Nene Koita, was an completed singer.
Diabaté, who had at all times been anticipated to hold on his household’s longstanding musical legacy, taught himself to play his father’s instrument.
His method was vividly showcased in his modern solo albums, Kaira (1988) and The Mandé Variations (2008). On Kaira — which was launched shortly after he turned 21 — his swish shifts between melody and bassat all times appeared like he was singing as a lot as enjoying.
Diabaté additionally created a extra expansive mission referred to as Symmetric Orchestra. This massive ensemble introduced collectively devices and repertoires from throughout the previous Mande Empire with added textures and punch from American and European strings and horns. Diabaté included authentic compositions alongside new variations of griot songs.
As Diabaté wrote within the liner notes of the orchestra’s 2006 album, Boulevard De L’Independance, “One of many philosophies of Symmetric is the encounter of generations. The outdated technology has its expertise in music, the brand new technology has its insanity in music.”
Diabaté’s enthusiasm for improvisation and sharing kora music all through the world led to a number of profitable collaborations. He recorded with legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré and one other nice kora participant, Ballake Sissoko. Diabaté additionally labored with artists whose backgrounds had been totally different from his personal. These collaborations included jazz and blues musicians, Spanish flamenco teams and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Taj Mahal: ‘It was like 500 years of separation not existed’
Via his music, he promoted his personal heritage whereas additionally serving to to point out how a lot that tradition was a part of a shared language. Blues guitarist Taj Mahal and Diabaté teamed up for the 1999 album Kulanjan together with a small group of Malian musicians. The album contains a wealthy mix of American acoustic folks and blues together with Malian musical types. Mahal’s gruff voice creates a compelling distinction with the upper registers of the Malian instrumentalists and singers. Regardless of their seemingly totally different types, Mahal discovered a mutual musical understanding of their collaboration.
“It was by no means like, ‘You play this, I’ll play that.’ We simply performed collectively, checked out one another and it was carried out. Identical to that. It was like 500 years of separation not existed,” Mahal mentioned.
Béla Fleck collaborated with Diabaté for a sequence of concert events in 2009. A number of the performances are included on their album, The Ripple Impact, which was launched in 2020. A way of pleasure comes by means of their rapidly shifting tempos and shared humorousness, evident in moments like Diabaté’s playful musical response to Fleck’s snippet of “Oh, Susannah” on the observe “Kauonding Sissoko.”
“Toumani was extremely candy from the beginning. He at all times referred to as me ‘my brother,’ which made me really feel very privileged,” mentioned Fleck. “Toumani had magnificence. That’s the factor I take into consideration, and that tremendous contact of his.”
‘An awesome artist who belongs to the world’
Iranian kamancheh participant Kayhan Kalhor was one among Diabaté’s most up-to-date collaborators, with their duo album, The Sky Is The Identical Color All over the place, launched final 12 months. Their pairing started with an invite to carry out collectively on the Morgenland Competition in Osnabrük, Germany, the place they met simply hours earlier than their first live performance. The album was recorded after a quick European tour, however their musical interaction advised a for much longer partnership.
“We got here two totally different cultures that see music in the identical approach. Improvisation being one of many main facets. The opposite facet is that our musical cultures go approach again,” Kalhor says. “If you’re that deep within the tradition and know the music of that tradition rather well, it offers you the liberty and the imaginative and prescient so as to add to it. So it’s not stunning {that a} musician of Toumani’s caliber and stature provides one thing to the music that the youthful technology makes use of.”
Kalhor added that whereas Diabaté is part of Mande tradition, finally his music connects with everybody.
“Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Akira Kurosawa and Abbas Kiarostami are nice artists who belong to the world,” Kalhor mentioned. “So I don’t see Toumani as a kora participant from Mali, I see him as an amazing artist who belongs to the world.”
Aaron Cohen is the writer of Transfer On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Energy (College of Chicago Press) and Superb Grace (Bloomsbury). He teaches humanities and English composition at Metropolis Faculties of Chicago and repeatedly writes concerning the arts for such publications because the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader and DownBeat.