I've been featuring the music of Bassekou Kouyate and his group Ngoni Ba on 2BBB's Local Global Show for five years now. Ngoni Ba's first two releases, "Segu Blue" and "I Speak Fula", were amongst the most feted releases to come out of Mali in recent times, with the focus on the Ngoni being of great interest to musicians and audiences far and wide.When Bassekou was 18 and playing music with Bamako's famous Rail Band, he made his first solo trip to the USA at the invitation of Taj Mahal. On visiting an African-American Museum, he saw that early slaves had taken the Ngoni with them across the Atlantic, only for it to evolve (with the addition of machine heads and other adjustments) into what we call a Banjo. The original Ngoni is like a hollowed out cricket bat with strings and Ngoni Ba were the first to experiment with a larger, bass version of the instrument as well as other sizes and tunings.
Bassekou Kouyate comes from a long line of griots who have specialised in the art of playing the Ngoni, and he is now obviously enjoying the fact that his own sons are of an age when they too can join him and their mother, the beautiful, talented and renowned Malian singer Amy Sacko, on stage at festivals and concerts all over the planet. One of my favourite tracks on this new CD is the closer "Moustafa", written by Moustafa 'Vieux' Kouyate in which he thanks his Mum and Dad for putting him through school and teaching him the Ngoni. He and his brother Madou, who plays the Ngoni bass, are only in their early twenties but they've been playing the instrument ever since they could pick one up and carry it.
The new family-oriented line-up - with father, mother, two sons and a nephew in matching colourful traditional robes - blew audiences away recently at Womadelaide with their totally-in-synch togetherness. They are as tight as any band I have ever seen and with this new CD "Jama Ko", there has been something of a shift, with performances being taken to a whole new level. There is now a far greater use of electronic effects, in particular the wah-wah on Bassekou's lead Ngoni which lends an air of breathless excitement and urgency.
Perhaps it is a reflection of the circumstances in which the album came to be recorded in Bamako in March 2012. Producer Howard Bilerman (renowned for his work with Arcade Fire) had been flown in from Montreal and Studio Bogolan booked, only for the city and country to descend into utter chaos as an unexpected military coup took place, ousting Kouyate's friend and supporter President Amadou Toumani Toure. Shots rang out barely a kilometre from where the recordings were taking place, with the radio station being the centre of the fighting. The coup changed the mood of the country overnight but somehow, between power cuts, fuel shortages and daily curfews, the recording still took place.
It is best exemplified by Bassekou's insistent "Ne Me Fatigue Pas" (Don't wear me out) a fast-paced, trance-like put down of all the shenanigans taking place around them. The chaos in the capital meant that things also changed rapidly in the North of Mali, with Islamist insurgents taking advantage and taking control, to impose sharia law and ban music in a country where music is in the blood. The title track "Jama Ko" means 'a great meeting of people' : Bassekou explains the meaning thus: "There are over 90% Muslims in Mali, but our form of Islam here has nothing to do with a radical form of Sharia: that is not our culture....If the Islamists stop people making music, they will rip the heart out of Mali". If you would like to discover the heart of this incredibly diverse and highly musical nation, you should track down a copy of this CD.
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