Abdoulaye Diabaté

A griot in service of mande ethnic music. This has always been Abdoulaye Diabaté's calling, ever since he was a budding percussionist in demand at parties back home. A free-spirited singer and poet raised in a family of griots — that ancient tribal figure conceived as an ambassador of the arts and later as a keeper safeguarding the oral tradition of one's ancestors from Western colonialism — it's no coincidence that his brother Kassé Mady, one of Mali's most famous singers, is also a griot.

Abdoulaye's career began to take off in 1976, the year he joined the Orchestre Régional of his hometown, Ségou, before winning over a wider audience as lead singer of Koulé Star de Koutiala and Kéné Star du Mali of Sikasso. It was with this latter outfit that Diabaté won first prize at the Biennales of Timbuktu in 1986 and 1988, crowning a golden period that culminated in the recording of his masterpiece, "Kassikoun", one of the most important works in Sahelian music.

Distributed by Syllart Records, the label through which many African works reached the West, "Kassikoun" — which means "Sometimes" in bambara — captures the essence of mande music and pulls together the pieces Diabaté had scattered in the preceding years, first as a member of Tentemba Jazz du Mali and then as founder of the Super Mande orchestra alongside Burkinabè musician Mangue Konde, whose first volume, "Wahabiadachi" (1978), despite its rough production, already contains the dress rehearsal for what would become Abdoulaye Diabaté's unmistakable style. An evolution of brilliant guitar flourishes and beguiling percussion that reached its melodic peak in 1988 with "Kassikoun", albeit with a more localized, less internationalized approach compared to other gems from the region, such as Salif Keita's "Soro" or Moussa Poussy & Saadou Bori's "Niamey Twice".

The circumstantial essence of the music is an important, defining detail for a record skillfully arranged by Boncana Maïga and Saffre Coulibaly: the former is a Malian flautist who lived in Cuba in the second half of the 1960s as part of Maravillas de Mali, an Afro-Cuban orchestra set up by Fidel Castro, before returning home to become one of the most important producers on the local scene (in the 1990s he would go on to produce Alpha Blondy); the latter, who plays guitar on "Kassikoun", would remain a constant presence on Diabaté's records between the late Eighties and early Nineties.

Recorded at the Jbz studios in Abidjan (Ivory Coast), the city Diabaté had moved to [note], "Kassikoun" is a treasure trove of rhythmic ideas, where a broad percussive spectrum intertwines with the lead guitar of the aforementioned Coulibaly and the rhythm guitar of Yacouba Balla (except on the tracks "Wale Gnouma" and "Djarake", where the accompaniment is handled by Guinean guitarist Dielly Moussa Kouyaté, an important musician who had already been collaborating with Salif Keita since the 1970s).

Woven through the eight songs are vocal melodies that honor, as befits a true griot like Abdoulaye, the tradition of Malian song, while the backing vocals of Ame Bamba, Angèle Adjorolo and Konimba Traore form a kind of mande-style I-Threes. It's a choral counter-melody that in moments like "Dona Bolife" rises up as a looping echo, and in the memorable "Louanze" tends to prop up the chorus, amid a solo that refuses to ever fully resolve and the emphatic horns of Manou Yodan (tenor sax) and Francis Ekoule (trumpet).

The interplay between the various instruments is precisely the harmonic thread running through the phases of a record that also features pastoral moments, such as the voice-and-guitar ballad "Wale Gnouma", with Diabaté cast in the dual role of romantic preacher and dream shaman. A prayer that sets up, at the record's center, the joy of "Sissi Kouloun", a dance that gets under your skin thanks to the sobbing keyboard of Akele Gata Gabi, popping up unexpectedly here and there, and the usual back-and-forth between trumpet, saxophone and plucked guitars.

This is the track that most clearly reveals the influence of wassoulou culture (native to southwestern Mali) on his music: the rhythm is a didadi, a pattern usually driven by multiple djembes (drums typical of Sahelian nations), derived from a traditional women's dance meant to bring good harvests. The lyrics too are steeped in local beliefs, so much so that in the chorus the singer declares: "The didadi is the music of the jinn" (source: Lucy Durán: "Birds of Wasulu", British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 1995). The jinn are supernatural entities that testify to the syncretism between Islam and traditional religions: their cult predates the preaching of Muhammad but was later absorbed into the new religion.

In this triumph of mande sounds, a tribute to the continent could hardly be missing, aptly titled "Africa", in which Diabaté proclaims his belonging to the African people while the backing singers repeat the continent's name throughout and the guitars dip back into the typical flourishes of Congolese rumba. The celebration is followed by a farewell, the acoustic "Djarake": here Diabaté seems to weep, his tears falling over the metronome kept by percussionist Tenekoun Diarra, marking the steps of a ceremony that closes out a landmark work of African pop, one all the more vital for being anchored to the primordial spirit of the Sahel in its most burning forms.

[note] The exact year is unclear. The Fula Flute school's website claims 1975, though this date seems unlikely, since according to most other sources he was still in Mali at that time, performing, as noted above, with local groups. This isn't the only biographical inconsistency surrounding the artist: even his birth date is uncertain, with sources roughly split between 1948 (African Music Library), 1952 (Mali Music) and 1956 (Fula Flute).

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16/03/2024