Toumani Diabate and Sidiki Diabate: Toumani & Sidiki (World Circuit)

 |   |  1 min read

Toumani Diabate and Sidiki Diabate: Lampedusa
Toumani Diabate and Sidiki Diabate: Toumani & Sidiki (World Circuit)

While many international music writers closer to the artists have been finding new hyperboles to acclaim the gifted young kora player Sidiki Diabate alongside his father Toumani (an accepted genius, the pre-eminent kora player of our time and a griot with about seven centuries behind him), there's a dissenting opinion which comes from a distance and just takes this CD as it finds it.

It's this: as exceptional as some of these 10 pieces are (and the beautiful Claudia and Salma is undeniably lovely, it's about the daughters of Diabate's manager) there's quite a lot of musical MOR occupied here. So despite many of the titles referring to important social and political figures in Mali, the uplifting instrumentals don't have much emotional gravitas for those beyond the region.

By way of example Toguna Industries apparently acknowledges the company which moved accumulated rubbish to the outskirts of the capital Bamako after the 2012 coup. Quite how this romantic music presumes those at a distance will get the implications of that goes straight past me I'm afraid.

And Rachid Ouiguini named for the Algerian scholar is superb, but in an archetypal Mali-meets-crossover flamenco way.

More immediate and obvious are the aching Lampedusa named for the Italian mid-Mediterranean island which has become the desperate destination for African refugees, and Bansang which evokes the Gambian town where Toumani's dad learned his craft.

That said, this is a very beautiful and genealogically significant album . . . but in the consumer context which world music -- like any other idiom -- exists, it's also just a record. It's importance accrues no greater moral or cultural importance for those at a distance from its socio-political and cultural import, who should be forgiven for just being taken in by its evident beauty.

Beyond the title references (aside from those who care to go beyond them) this lovely album may not quite the political milestone some Western champions think it is.

But it is lovely. Is it wrong to be so shallow? 

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   World Music from Elsewhere articles index

Tinariwen: Amassakoul (Wrasse/Shock): BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2006

Tinariwen: Amassakoul (Wrasse/Shock): BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2006

Tinariwen were from a group of stateless wanderers who lived at the whim of weather and changing political climates in the greater Sahara, and were educated in the language of armed struggle. In... > Read more

Julia Vorontsova; Over (Privet)

Julia Vorontsova; Over (Privet)

In the manner of television game show hosts from the Sixties, Elsewhere is going to  . . .  "flip all the card" (to reveal the quiz question answer) and say . . . We've... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

Howard Devoto of Magazine: The floorboards creak . . .

Howard Devoto of Magazine: The floorboards creak . . .

Back at the dawn of time -- for two periods in 1980 and 1981 to be precise -- I had a programme on Radio Pacific on Saturday evening, sandwiched between the Rugger Buggers sports show and, of all... > Read more

POI E AND PATEA MAORI (1988): Dalvanius, man of passion

POI E AND PATEA MAORI (1988): Dalvanius, man of passion

The old wooden Methodist church in a side street in Patea isn’t used much anymore. A lot of places in Patea aren't. It's a town battered by the economic ideas of successive governments and... > Read more