tue 19/03/2024

Mali

Album: Rokia Koné & Jacknife Lee - Bamanan

Combining ancestral music with electronic sounds has become so widespread that it’s almost a cliché. Dance floors now pulsate with sounds from around the globe, adding a welcome warmth and heart to the tropes of techno, house and trance. Malian...

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Album: Toumani Diabate and the London Symphony Orchestra - Kôrôlén

Toumani Diabate, master of the 21-string kora, along with some other Malian musicians, collaborated on a symphonic concert at London's Barbican Centre in 2008. The orchestra in question were the London Symphony, who have often been open to working...

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Album: Ballaké Sissoko - Djourou

Ballaké Sissoko is one of the greatest musicians in Africa – a kora player of extraordinary quality, strongly rooted in the Manding and family traditions that have nourished him. He’s also a born collaborator, with a sense of adventure that has...

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Fatoumata Diawara, Roundhouse review - Malian magic on show

Fatoumata Diawara knows how to please: with a winning and innocent smile, she wins the audience over in a matter of seconds. She has a vocal style all of her own: in her first song, “Don Do”, a quiet and meditative prelude to the boisterous show...

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Rokia Traoré: Dream Mandé: Djata, Brighton Festival 2019 review – resonant griot wisdom

Rokia Traoré’s passage through this year’s Brighton Festival has been central, binding it to her Malian identity in a series of gigs. This hands-on Guest Director’s pulsing Afro-rock Opening Night was followed by the first Dream Mandé show’s...

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Rokia Traoré: Dream Mandé: Bamanan Djourou, Brighton Festival 2019 review – traditions soar free

Much of Rokia Traoré’s set on Saturday night comprised folk songs about Mali’s warrior kings, connecting with her country’s fabulously wealthy, proudly powerful past. They suit this diplomat’s daughter’s regal stature, which she has put at the...

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Deep State, Series 2, Fox review - covert conspiracies in Africa

Last year’s first season of Deep State featured cloak and dagger exploitations of chaos in the Middle East by the capitalist West and its intelligence services. Judging by its opening episode, this second iteration is about to do something similar,...

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Rokia Traoré: Né So, Brighton Festival review - an Afro-psychedelic head-fry

The last thing many were expecting from Rokia Traoré’s opening appearance at this year’s Brighton Festival was an Afro-psychedelic head-fry, yet she and her four-piece band prove thoroughly capable of swirling our minds right off out of it. When she...

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theartsdesk Radio Show 21

The latest of Peter Culshaw’s global music round-up of new and re-released sounds features new albums from veteran Afro-beat pioneer Tony Allen, an astonishing collaboration between revered string quartet Kronos and Malian traditionalists Trio Da...

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WOMAD 2017, Charlton Park review - multicultural nirvana transcends mud-bath conditions

Now in its 35 year, Womad is embedded into British festival culture, flying the flags of a musical multiculturalism that is about breaking down barriers and building new relationships. It’s not something you want to lose.Aside from pleasurable...

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CD: Vieux Farka Touré - Samba

The river of sound from Mali never stops flowing. War in the Sahara and the constant threat of Jihadists haven’t stopped the ceaseless wave of creativity that surges through the West African country.The Malians speak of music giving courage, of song...

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CD: Oumou Sangaré - Mogoya

Contemporary music from Mali hovers delicately (and creatively) between purist tradition and more or less successful attempts at making things more attractive to a younger and worldwide audience. Oumou Sangaré’s first five albums for the British...

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