Toumani Diabaté's new album is a captivating blend of tradition and innovation

The West African kora is a felicitous combination of calabash gourd, cowskin and fishing line. In the hands of the Malian virtuoso Toumani Diabaté, it not only looks cool, but sounds sensational. And the title of Diabaté's new solo album, The Mandé Variations, suggests music to sit beside The Goldberg Variations or anything else in the canon of western music.

Listen to the lengthy opening track, "Si naani", and you hear an instrument that is indeed the equal of a piano, with a bass, middle-parts and a dreamy melody on the top. The 21 nylon strings are arranged in two vertical rows and are played with just the forefinger and thumb of each hand. The lines of music weave and intertwine in a continuous flow that grows and develops organically. It is helped on The Mandé Variations by a gloriously clear sound that would delight Alfred Brendel or Vladimir Ashkenazy.

The music of Toumani Diabaté is both captivating and puzzling, with an unmistakably courtly feel to it. Indeed, one of the first kora recitals in the UK, involving both Toumani and his father, Sidiki Diabaté, who came to perform at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1987, was part of a BBC concert series called Music of the Royal Courts. The court in question was that of the Mandé empire, which flourished in West Africa between the 13th and 15th centuries.

This musical culture goes back to the 13th century, when hereditary griot musicians praised the king. The kora itself, however, is a relative newcomer. It is thought to have originated in the land where present-day Guinea-Bissau lies, and spread to Gambia, southern Senegal, Guinea and Mali, the areas where it is most commonly heard today. The kora is not mentioned, for instance, by the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta, who visited the Malian court in 1352, but he describes the ngoni (lute) and balafon (xylophone), which are still commonly heard in Mali to this day.

The earliest written reference to "the korri, a harp with 18 strings", is found in Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa, by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who travelled along the Niger in the 1790s. Sidiki Diabaté moved to Mali from Gambia, where he learned from an uncle who was yet another famous kora player, Amadu Bansang Jobar teh (the Gambian spelling of Diabaté).

The Diabatés/Jobartehs are one of the leading families of griots in West Africa and have had music in their blood for centuries. It was Sidiki Diabaté who pioneered the kora as a solo instrument, rather than just an instrument to accompany traditional praise singers. Toumani started learning at the age of five and recorded Kaira, the first solo kora album, in 1987, when he was just 21 years old.

With its rippling, filigree textures and seductive, ringing sound, the kora has become the emblematic instrument of Sahelian West Africa - and Mali in particular, the country at the heart of what was once the Mandé empire. Electrified kora was the instrument that propelled Mory Kanté's hit song "Yéké, Yéké" of 1988 (said to be the first million-selling single by an African artist) and kora patterns were transposed on to the guitars of such new electric groups as the Rail Band. However, the acoustic instrument has remained hugely important in Malian music.

While Sidiki Diabaté, who died in 1996, was a traditionalist, Toumani listens much more widely, citing influences as various as Jimi Hendrix and, for the new CD, UB40. He performs live regularly with his Bamako-based big band, the Symmetric Orchestra; he has also done blues recordings with Taj Mahal, flamenco with Ketama and more rocky, experimental projects with Damon Albarn and Björk.

The Mandé Variations is probably the most ambitious album of solo kora music ever recorded. Some of the pieces ("Kaounding Cissoko" and "Djourou Kara Nany") are classics, although given new variations, while others such as "Ali Farka Touré" and "El Nabiyouna" are clearly innovative to anyone, even if you've never heard a note of kora playing before. "Ali Farka Touré" is an extended improvisation, beginning with dark, muffled notes and then soaring away in virtuoso runs, but always thoughtful and never predictable. It is, of course, a homage to the great Malian guitarist and singer, who died in 2006 and with whom Diabaté had recorded a duet album a year earlier.

The closing piece, "Cantelowes", is a version of a swinging piece called "Jarabi", which Toumani recorded for both Kaira and the brilliant collaboration with Ketama on Songhai (1991). Together, the three versions of this song show in microcosm how Malian music keeps itself fresh, and yet remains faithful to its roots.

"The Mandé Variations" (World Circuit) is released on 25 February

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website