check this out. interesting read and great music.
-p
"the album itself [...] was recorded live over four days in Madrid without any prior rehearsals. A joyfully ebullient meeting point between traditional Malian music and the kind of Cuban rhythms the Buena Vista Social Club brought to the wider world, AfroCubism continues a cultural exchange that has been going for over half a century. In 1960, following independence from France, Mali's president Modibo Keïta introduced one-party socialism, resulting in Fidel Castro becoming a close ally and Cuban music being actively promoted throughout Mali. A member of the entourage old enough to remember this period is Djelimady Tounkara.
One of Africa's foremost guitarists, Tounkara moved from the countryside to the Malian capital of Bamako in the early 60s to become a tailor, but ended up joining a state-sponsored orchestra instead. "We were encouraged to play Cuban music," says Tounkara, a gentle bear of a man whom the other musicians hold in a great deal of affection. "And it wasn't hard to combine Malian and Cuban music, because people from Africa went to Cuba and took the rhythms with them."
This musical cross-pollination came to an abrupt end in 1968, when a military coup overthrew Keïta. The new regime encouraged the development of authenticité – traditional African music, devoid of outside influences. "After the coup d'etat, the military destroyed the ballet, the opera, everything," says Tounkara. "I dealt with this by escaping to Senegal, but the military made me come back, and I had to find a new way of making a living as a musician."
So began one of the strangest and most celebrated episodes in the history of Malian music. In 1972, Tounkara joined the Rail Band, a group initially hired by railway authorities to play in a hotel lounge near the main station in Bamako to help pass the time for people waiting to catch a train. The Rail Band became a phenomenon, with African music legends Salif Keita and Mory Kanté passing through its ranks; it became the first band to combine traditional instruments with an Afro-Cuban sound. Tounkara managed to sneak in a Cuban influence while remaining close enough to authenticité to keep the authorities off his back. "I don't want to boast," Tounkara says with a little wiggle of the head, "but I played an important part in the development of Malian music with the Rail Band. We created something new."
Among the younger musicians who had to discover Cuban music is Bassekou Kouyate, a ngoni (traditional string instrument) player with more than a passing resemblance to Otis Redding; and Lassana Diabaté, a member of Toumani Diabaté's band (though no relation) and a player of the xylophone-like balafon. They seem to come as a pair, and wish to be interviewed together. "When we grew up, the only Cuban song we knew was Guantanamera," Kouyate says. "We didn't have the opportunities to get influences from the rest of the world. With AfroCubism, there was no time to do a rehearsal, so we had to learn about Cuban music on the spot. But we did it."
- The Guardian (
read)
www.mediafire.com/?wpzrsw82kdatmwwhttp://www.myspace.com/afrocubism
