Toumani Diabate @ Metrotech, Brooklyn , 2007.

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Toumani Diabate was born in Mali, West Africa. He is of the griot or djeli caste, a lineage of musicians which can be traced over 70 generations, according to family oral tradition. Toumani Diabate plays the kora, a 21-stringed harp made from a calabash gourd, an instrument which has changed little over centuries. He was a child prodigy, who began playing at age 5 and performing by age 13.

Toumani Diabate made his international debut with 1988's Kaira, an album often acknowledged as the finest solo kora work ever recorded. In the 20 years that followed, Diabate focused mainly on collaborative work, recording with both his fellow Malians (including Ali Farka Toure, Ballake Sissoko, and Vieux Farka Toure) as well as musicians of international renown (including Taj Mahal, Bjork, and flamenco group Ketama). Diabate also recorded with The Symmetric Orchestra, a group of griots that he hand-selected from across West Africa. In 2008, he released The Mande Variations, his first solo kora record in 20 years. 

Megan Romer, WorldMusic.about.com

Posted by "nycsummer"

Moussa Doumbia - "Keleya"

Moussa Doumbia - Keleya (Original Version)

Moussa Doumbia was a saxophonist, arranger, author/composer who used African American funk as his main inspiration during the 1970's. Living in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, West Africa, the Malian artist recorded an audacious music for a restricted public, with the help of two French American producers based there, Cathy & Albert Loudes. ( more ).

afrobeat-music.blogspot.com

Posted by "reedumful"

D' Gary

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D'Gary performing at The Skirball Center, 2002.

Ernest Randrianasolo – better known to Madagascan music fans as D'Gary – was born in the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, 1961. He is a descendent of the Bara tribe, a nomadic people who traditionally made their living herding oxen across the plains of the central south. 

...D'Gary's style is disconcerting to say the least. Listen closely to his music and you'll swear there must be at least two guitarists playing. This illusion stems from D'Gary's penchant for "open tunings" (a special technique he has developed through years of patient research and which, needless to say, he keeps totally secret!) Open tunings are actually nothing new in musical terms. In fact, they form the basis of tsapiky, the music that influenced D’Gary so strongly in his early years. However, in tsapiky musicians change only one string while D'Gary alters several. Some critics have claimed that D'Gary's unique playing style attempts to reproduce the sound of the marovany (the traditional Madagascan frame box zither). But D'Gary's secret techniques actually make his guitar sound more like the lokanga (the traditional violin which plays such a major role in the Bara's havoria).... ( more )

RFiMusique.com , Radio France Internationale

Sunny Ade & his African Beats - "Syncro System Movement "

..." Probably Nigeria's most popular musician, King Sunny Ade (ah-DAY) became a major force in popularizing African music in the United States with a series of tours and albums during the 1980s. A concert by King Sunny Ade and His African Beats was a dazzling, kinetic experience that introduced Western listeners to the rich complexities of African musical performance. Heading up a group of 20 to 30 musicians on stage with his vocals and electric guitar, Ade sang phrases in the Yoruba language that meshed with the large battery of traditional percussion on stage, entered into dialogues with other musicians, and joined in with the dancers who brought constant motion to the ensemble. The music Ade played was called juju--a style that went back to the 1920s, but one that Ade developed further than any other musician..." ( more )

James M. Manheim , Answers.com

Posted by "groovemonzter" .

Oumou Sangare - 'Iyo Djeli'

Oumou Sangare and the Kick Horns rehearsing  at Africa Express, Parvis de l'Hotel de Ville, Paris, August 2009.

..."Sangare was born in Bamako, the capital of Mali, in 1968. Her parents had migrated to the city from the rural Wassoulou region south of the Niger River. Her mother, Aminata Diakhite, was also a talented singer and encouraged her daughter to follow in her footsteps. Sangare made her public performing debut at the age of six, singing for a huge crowd at Bamako's main sports arena, the Stade des Omnisports. Before the show began, her mother counseled her, according to her Nonesuch Records bio, to "sing like you're at home in the kitchen."

Her mother's advice apparently paid off, for Sangare's talent soon earned her membership in The National Ensemble of Mali, which serves as a training ground for the best musicians in that country. In 1986 Sangare was invited by Bamba Dambele, known for his work with the African pop ensemble Super Djata Band, to tour Europe with his traditional percussion troupe Djobila. The European tour opened Sangare's eyes to the possibility of an international career of her own. Upon her return to Mali, she immediately went to work forming her own band and developing a songwriting style and sound that effectively blended Wassoulou tradition with a modern pop sensibility..." ( more )

Musicianguide.com

posted by"worldcircuitltd"

Albert Nyathi - "The World As We Dance Along"

Albert Nyathi is a survivor, one of the few full time artists who graduated from the stormy corridors of Zimbabwe's sole University (at that time) in the 1980s. He spent years of his youth struggling in a refugee camp as war raged around him.The very human struggles for freedom in the region influenced his poetry and his social desire to bring change through the power of oration. Certainly he has persuaded people to sit up, listen and take command of their situation.He gave up his rapidly advancing career in government service as a very well informed senior member of Zimbabwe's National Arts Council to concentrate on performance and the development of youth training programmes in the arts in Harare's townships.His background in the performing arts allowed him to try various forms of experimental performance from his early career with Alcyti his first public attempts with accompanied poetry. His first major stage performance as an actor was in the outstanding production of Mandela- The Spirit Of No Surrender in the early 1990s produced by the community theatre company Zambuko/ Izibuko and the ANC as a co-production about a family's struggle in the townships through the period of Mandela's encarceration.

 ( www.imbongi.com )

 Posted by"ShayaFM"
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Rokia Traorè

" Mbifo"



Posted by "ibognini" Feb 2010 .

"Dounia"

..." Traore was born in the Beledougou region of Mali in 1974. Her father was a diplomat, and consequently she and her family traveled extensively, and lived in Belgium, France, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Mali's capital, Bamako. Throughout her youth Traore's transient lifestyle made it difficult for her to fit in with her peers, and she was neither fully part of her African nor her European classmates' worlds. Her father, Mamadou, played the saxophone and introduced Traore to such jazz artists as Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. Traore found solace in music and recalled to Renee Graham in a Boston Globe interview, "I was a very solitary child.... Music was therapy for me. I was writing lyrics even before I realized I wanted to be a professional singer.".... ( more )

MusicianGuide.com

K. Frimpong & Vis-A-Vis - "Aboagyeawaa"

From the second album with Vis-A-Vis was recorded in 1978 on the label Ofori Brothers.

Vis-A-Vis was led by Issac Yeboah, based in Kumasi and featuring some of the Ghana's finest musicians of the 70's: Sammy Cropper on lead guitar, Slim Yaw on bass and Kung-fu Kwaku on drums.

Posted by "nickivour"    ORO's Blog

Afel Bocoum - "Ali Farka"

An essential member of Ali Farka Toure's band for more than three decades, Afel Bocoum took his first steps into the limelight with his debut solo album, Alkibar: Messenger of the Great River, in 1999. It was recorded along the banks of the Niger River, during a five-day break from working on Toure's album Niafunke. Alkibar set finger-picked guitar melodies and soulful vocals, in the Sonrai, Fula, and Tamashek languages, to a musical tapestry of lute, monochord njurkle, calabash, spike fiddles, and a three-voiced choir. The BBC reviewed Bocoum's performance on the album as "gentler than the stabbing blues style of Ali Farka Toure. Bocoum's sound is poly-rhythmic, warm, and enchanting with simple magnetic melodies and hummable choruses." The son of a njoika and njurkle player, Bocoum began playing with Toure, in Troupe Musicale De Niafunke, at the age of 13. Although he left the group to study agriculture at M'Pessoba in South Mali, in 1975, he reunited with his former mentor in Toure's band, Asko, in the early '80s. ( Craig Harris, AllMusic.com )