mardi 7 mars 2006

Mali's music lesson (Ali Farka Touré and Rokia Traoré) Once upon a time, when tomorrow they lay Ali Farka Touré in the ground, it will be in a big village not far from Timbuktu, a desert town whose name had a poetic, legendary resonance long before most of the world could locate it on a map. With time, he became an electric griot and an electrifying one in whom to find soul-food energy. Sometimes he told visitors to the community to which he returned and farmed, in semi-retirement, that he likened the power he believed in to the Niger. One of his continent's greatest, that river's antique western name has been given to two countries. It flows through his own and has its divinities. Blues 'griot' as oral guardian In west Africa, griots are the elders of the community who preserve its history and traditions in their heads. They teach them to each new generation, which finds its initiates with remarkable memories and reverence for the stories. In Mali and its largely desert neighbours, griots safeguard much of a community's shared knowledge in music. The survival of a culture, often oral, depends on those who uphold its heritage and practice its rites. Today there are computer archives in Bamako. Telecom satellites over Africa let us know in Paris when Ali Farka died, aged 67, in a country he loved so much that though he toured the world, he said he was much happier at home. One tribute to a musician who twice shared the annual Grammy award for the best traditional world music music album, first in 1995 and then this year, will tell you on the Internet and in newspapers that he was, for some, "Africa's John Lee Hooker." True, Touré's got the blues, so to pass on such a description is a kind of compromise. It is arguable many more people will know who the American bluesman was than those who have heard of Ali Farka Touré when you give them the news, and it is confusing to contend that John Lee Hooker was in fact a trans-Atlantic Touré who tuned back in. A news agency obituary, already long at 650 words, might raise eyebrows, if not in west Africa, if it waffled about matters of the spirit* and articles of faith. Touré himself wouldn't mind. I talk of him as a man still very much alive though bone cancer on Tuesday morning killed the body they will bury in Niafunké, where he was mayor. So does Toumani Diabate, who shared the 2006 Grammy award for 'In The Heart of the Moon' and said on learning the news that from his elder, he had learned more than a broader approach to making music. "He was modest and shared all he had. He helped everyone," Diabate says of a man he considered a kind father and teacher of spiritual values. To know more of the bluesman, who won the first Grammy with the American Ry Cooder, helped make "world music", see the Wikipedia on Ali Farka Touré, the links at the bottom there and some in the blogroll here. And listen. Change by cautious choice Listen to his music and you'll very likely hear why I'd turn the Touré-Hooker kinship round and what I hear in his young compatriot, Rokia Traoré, who sings: "I still remember my sadness When I observed couples Crushed by the weight of their bond. Men and women for whom Union becomes a yoke. 'Solitude would be a guarantee of a more agreeable life,' I told myself. I would not have to deal with the sweet bitterness Which pervades couples with the passage of time. This way I would enjoy only love unions, Never bitter unions." Mali is a nation of gentle, giving and extremely poor people. Touré was around 30 when he could afford his first electric guitar. But the poverty that has in recent years worsened dire famines in the region, is the material reflection of the ways of the world. The generosity and a strength of soul found in Mali and other places today known as sub-Sahel territory is, I believe and have been told by those who live there, a response to living with the Sahara. The desert has a big impact on character. Resources are so scarce, you treasure them profoundly. The experience and wisdom of those who lived to bring your generation into existence are considered of equal value. Touré died just before the world marks International Women's Day. Traoré might consider herself in some sense his musical "daughter", but in those lines from 'M'Bifo', the first track on 'Bowmboï', she sings, "I would not have my love life ruined by family tradition when it's wrong." Today's young generation in Mali, speaking well over half a dozen languages of their own (that song is translated from Bamanan) as well as French and English, are members of the notorious "global village", learning from the practices of others to protest what they dislike in the ways of their elders. While most sub-Sahel people are Muslims, they weren't always. Seasoned by the sands What has changed even more slowly for centuries than cultural values, until global warming and imported and imposed agricultural practices began to contribute to its recession, is the Sahara. Though ignored in the news except when it's nasty, the people of Mali are victims and beneficiaries of modernisation like the rest of us, but the hardships and rewards of the desert have taught them to treat tradition and their elders with high regard. Rokia Traoré will go on fighting for women's rights. She will also go on playing traditional music in her own way, like Ali Farka Touré, and press the case in interviews for the wisdom of the griots. Any harsh environment causes people who live in it to weigh the sustenance of the body and the values of the soul very carefully. Touré did, always knowing where his roots were. His music and teaching brought people from Mississippi to Mali, not the other way round. Before the culture ministry announced his death, we learned of it from a foundation he established in Niafunké that will always bear his name and pass on the finest traditions to the young, as griots do. Touré had an unshakeable faith in the power of music to resource people as surely as an oasis. If you search the Net, you'll find tales he tells that some would call supernatural. For him it was natural -- and memorable and magical -- when the sand sung and a snake spoke to him, each in their way, teaching him his own. Beneath 'world music', the way beyond This is his column and his country's music's column. I'd like to add a word regarding those "industrial" musicians and people cast in similar moulds I'm listening to this week, though with time set aside for 'Talking Timbuktu,' the 1994 album that won Touré and Ry Cooder his other Grammy award. In the usually much more manufactured, synthesised sounds to be described later, you can often hear Africa. You can hear Arab influences and others to be mentioned. The musicians draw from a source whose name won't last nearly as long as Timbuktu. It is fitting that Touré shared both his Grammies. Desert peoples generally do share their wealth with strangers, however little it is, if their guests behave in a fitting fashion. He and the people with whom he shared music made the well called "world music". I don't believe that term will last much longer. The days of "world music", measured carefully in the time span of music from its origins like they weigh things in Mali, are numbered like those of a traveller in the Sahara without a compass. Toure's foundation and similar institutions in other spots around the globe remind us what to make of that all-embracing virtual village when weighed against the strength of wise traditions. "World music" has been a fashionable fad, a phase of a passing generation. It's not over yet, but it means very little to most musicians. Those who survive, the ones we'll long remember, are stubborn. They'll take what they enjoy from elsewhere and like to play with others who share their sense of harmony, but they aren't set to last long unless, like Touré did and Traoré does, they know and love their roots. ______ *An inhabitual practice, linking like that, but there was a minor material consideration: had I delved deep into Touré's magico-musical beliefs in the first music piece it befell me to edit into shape for AFP after their proposal when it comes to women, they could retract the offer! You see, I really do have a "day" job. 10:23:56 PM  link   your views? [] Odd bumps in the night (t.a.T.u and a start on Collide) In Darren Aronofsky's mathematical thriller 'Pi', Max the brain is prone to migraine bouts so vile he moans, sobs and smashes his long, high cranium against hard surfaces. You'd wonder how much worse he could make it for himself, unless you've ever been there. Stark black and white imagery and strong shadows heighten the impact of cult material in every sense. I've had some migraines. This year a new round began, infrequent but enough last week for serious talk and planning a scan. An episode over the weekend put a stop to any talk or thought. Once it eased, the hour was black and claustrophobic and I began making notes. Between bouts of head-banging and pressing my face into a wall, on a certified overdose of pain-killers, I scribbled on when it was possible. This tricky time had much to do with women and with music. I want to beat the migraines. You know the feeling you're close to grasping something and it's maddening, you can't quite get it; and you perhaps knowdreams where you were very near, it seemed important, then whatever it was evaporated. But I ended the notes, found words. Then I trashed them because I never wanted to go back, just feeling a wash of relief that a physical connection suddenly seemed so apparent between life events and the onset of those blinding headaches. After some short but decent sleep, I realised how idiotic that wiping was and luckily know how to retrieve freshly erased data. Medically, it would have been unsound to keep it to myself. I choose the word "unsound" advisedly. The log records musical tales and related personal ones. Columns on sexuality and harmony are part of it. What I learned over the weekend makes some sense of those nauseous headaches and I've some interesting notes to compare now, drawing on experience. Migraines may have many causes; I really began to feel better on agreeing with what my own body tells me instead of things I used to be told by others and must have taken too much to heart. Writing intimately about non-public people has become a "no-no", though I did once and enjoy reading some who still do. But direct discussion of people's sexual outlook and behaviour with some I know are fairly frequent in view of connections I make, if they know why and that I won't write about individuals. I want to be able, in the months to come, to answer questions often raised about female and male sexuality, the differences and commonalities in the depth you can when you take sex for a part of people's "music". Doing so changes attitudes when I ask questions of my own. It's more intriguing and fun for everyone than asking me, "Why women musicians?" Loud and exuberant, a couple of Russians fell into a pair of hands still slightly shaky from a migraine weekend that I hope was the last. Let's get it straight. Lena Katina and Julia Volkova, who say their second favourite country is France, are on front pages of glossy magazines. They're sexually provocative, enjoy wild times and are far too young for the sometimes disturbed thinking and reappraisal of self that can overwhelm -- like it or not -- women in the age group I know best, early to mid-40s, having grown up and shared a life with some of them. t.a.T.u.'s feckless frolicking is only a part of their ongoing story. They're far from insouciant and the cover-girl caresses of their albums and the 'Screaming for More' DVD -- disappointing on quantity and range of content, better on most of the quality -- is partly for real, part invention. You hear it among some of those who like "the Russian lesbians" but don't know about the boyfriends. Julia and Lena play with sexual preferences. They were being tossed around 'Le Bouquet' on the corner, since somebody had brought in a yellow rag, everyone was laughing over it and I politely snatched it from the woman next to me so I could read the wretched interview instead of just making fun of pictures. It didn't say much because the pair ran rings round the journalist, as he merited for asking questions as dumb as he did. He fell for the image and the girls teased him for it, making the most of their "closeness". They are very close, physically and in music, which makes for success, but the best way to know more is to go to the sort of source suggested last November 20. You find a poetry and life insights that come with light and dark sides they attribute to being Russian and they can pack a tough emotional punch into their videos. What may become of t.a.T.u. as their reputation spreads? They directly address their own age group. The consumption can be conspicuous, they're Moscow's "material girls". The sex is controversial in some eyes and the rocker chick sound hard on some ears. The message is a broader "love and let live". It's quite hard to guess what they will become, but Russians have a long-established reputation for staying power and the fierce independence that marks out this pair. For the moment, having made note of the direct physical link between my migraines and some sensitive ground that needs shifting fast to get rid of them, I took a double dose of t.a.T.u., then decided it's best simply to chill out until there's a clear way of addressing sexual issues pertinent to older women. When you're doing a site like this, those are ever-present. Songwriters inevitably delve constantly into love relationships, what goes right, what goes wrong, and every other spin on the subject you can imagine. It's very enjoyable too, but the point's been made I write often about people's "music" even if they don't describe themselves that way. Women musicians and their stories offer a means of approaching this I'd like to reflect on a little further before tackling some forms of harmony or the lack of it. By way of a break, how about 'Chasing the Ghost' (2003) and more in the same vein? Amazon Fr has put Collide under heavy metal. Hmm... "Driving industrial soundtracks" is one description the band themselves give for what they do. I assure you this is a case of just listen and have a clear notion of what you want to say for the night. Collide are new to me, so we'll have to put what I've just found down what to synchronicity: "Chasing the Ghost, says kaRIN, is named to capture that feeling of searching for essence ... the feeling of yearning like a space you can't fill, or a haunting you can't quite put your finger on." No wonder the iPod finger stopped there then, pressed the button, and my soul echoed, "Yup, this is the kind of music for the week." I've been "chasing the ghost", I'm not sure I've laid it yet, and that label "industrial" crops up often in my music reading, one of the myriad insider terms I don't like very much. STATIK & kaRIN, this duo spells itself, and hey cast a suitable spell already on minimal acquaintance and in light of a desire to head on into more of the ethereal along with a driving physical pulse, and lyrics you're trying to catch. The list of given terms the kind of sound I'm after is about two dozen long so far... I know what around 10 of those conjure up and guess that short of resorting industriously to the Wikipedia, a lot of people who haven't chosen a path like mine don't know what some of those mean, but find them vaguely alienating. I once did when on seeing them on store shelves, which was a pity. Had someone said, "You're walking out of the Factory into something 'industrial'," maybe I'd thought twice. So we're going to get into this stuff a rather different way, because the music itself is certainly of a kind I feel a lot of people might find they enjoy. I've had a taster, so have you, and that's it for the night. 12:03:11 AM  link   your views? []

nick b. 2007 do share, don't steal, please credit under artistic licence terms; contributing friends (pix, other work) retain their rights.