CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Bassekou Kouyate

Zankel Hall
Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 10:00 PM

Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba
·· Bassekou Kouyate, Lead Ngoni
·· Fousseyni Kouyate, Medium Bass Ngoni
·· Barou Kouyate, Ngoni
·· Moussa Bah, Bass Ngoni (Ngoniba)
·· Amy Sacko, Vocals
·· Alou Coulibaly, Calabash
·· Moussa Sissoko, Percussion

Presented by Carnegie Hall in partnership with World Music Institute.

Program Notes:

The repertoire Bassekou Kouyate plays is Bambara music from the region of Segu in Mali. Bambara music is pentatonic in nature and as close to the blues as one can get in Africa. He has written most of the selections performed on tonight’s program—many of which are inspired by traditional songs from his native country.

“Tineni” (“little sardine”) uses traditional Bamana wedding lyrics that praise and encourage young girls to behave properly and remain virgins. “Those who do so can look forward to a happy destiny.”

“Jonkoloni” is inspired by a traditional song with the same title, recorded by Mali’s famous ngoni player Banzoumana Sissoko (Bassekou’s grandfather) in 1970 and released on the Anthology of Malian Music. The song deals with the seizing of the village Jonkoloni. In the epic tale of the Segu Bamana Empire, as told by the griots, Jonkoloni was a well-guarded fortress some 200 kilometers northwest of Segu with a fierce army that resisted the authority of the Bamana ruler (faama) Monzon Diarra and his army (tonjon). After Monzon’s death, his eldest son became ruler and vowed to destroy Jonkoloni. He called on the supernatural powers of his sorcerers, and sent his soldiers to throw a bewitched black cat into the town well in order to put the population under a spell. The soldiers, however, failed to do this, instead discarding the cat in the bush. The challenge was finally taken up by a warrior named Silimakan, who threw the black cat in the well, decimated the population, killed the ministers who ruled the village, captured the most powerful minister’s daughter and took her as his wife, and returned to Segu victorious. Bassekou learned this song from his grandfather and explains that it was a warning to the people of Jonkoloni. “Wake up. Are you sleeping? Bad omens are around. Black cats are here. The village well is deep—it will betray you. Unite your people and fight.” Bassekou added a new verse as a tribute to his grandfather, who died in 1987. “Banzoumana will never die. Banzoumana is a great man. You lived your life well, you left nothing shameful behind you.”

“Torin, torin” (“slowly, slowly”) is about the army of Bitò Coulibaly as the soldiers returned home after battle, celebrating their victory, dancing, and partying. (Bitò Coulibaly founded the Bamana Empire in 1712). The warriors are moving torin, torin, taking their time as they celebrate their victory. The griots are there singing for them, praising their courage and dignity, and talking about the great things the warriors have done.

“Segu Blue,” Bassekou’s adaptation of “Poyi,” the original “Bamana Blues” found in different versions along the Niger. In the days of the Bamana Empire, with its glorification of war, the term poyi denoted praise of warfare, violence, and fearlessness. The song used to be played to warriors before they went into battle. Bassekou explains that it sounds like the blues; as the warriors listened, they wondered if they would ever come back alive to their homes and family or instead be captured and sold into slavery—or worse yet lie dead in the battlefield, food for vultures.

“Ngoni Fola,” or “The Great Ngoni Player,” criticizes the selfish nature of people today. Malians cared for their neighbors in the past, while people today live only for themselves, mistreating others. The latter affects all kinds of relationships—between husband and wife, and between neighbors or different cultures. People must be tolerant, compromising for the sake of harmony. “The great ngoni player, the lion of ngonis, has arrived to entertain us, so we can enjoy ourselves, and not quarrel.”

“Jamana be diya” means “the nation will be strong, good.” This is a new take on “Massane Siise,” a very popular Gambian song that is sometimes called “Dunuya.” “Let’s all work together in harmony for a common goal—the goal of peace and progress in our country. Fighting destroys the nation. Let’s all be as one. If we join hands, our country will go forwards. Black people, white people, our ancestors came together at the time of Sunjata Keita to bring peace to the land. Friends who join forces will make our country a good place in which to live.” (Sunjata Keita founded the Mali Empire in 1235.)

“Saro” is a prayer that nothing bad happens to those whom you love. Only a few days after recording this song, Bassekou’s younger brother Boubacar (“Saro”) was killed in a motorbike accident. Saro, one of nine remaining brothers by the same mother and father, was the favorite brother of all of them, a selfless and always cheerful and hardworking young man. This song is dedicated to him, as is the entire I Speak Fula album.

“Bambugu Blues” is a song about Nce (pronounced “n-chi”), one of the sons of Ngolo Diarra, ruler of the Bamana Empire (sometime around the 1770s). Nce was exiled to the village of Bambugu, which was far away from Segu and the river and therefore had no water. The griots loved Nce because he was very generous, but they complained that they had nowhere to wash. Nce’s wife would wake up every morning in tears, saying she missed the sound of the hippos. So finally Nce said, “I will bring the water to you!” He had a huge canal built all the way from the Niger to the village, bringing irrigation and prosperity to the land. Unfortunately, Nce was not attractive and had teeth that stuck out; one day he met a Fula ruler who mocked him, saying that the Fula (a very beautiful and rather vain people) would never accept such an ugly person to rule them. Humiliated, poor old Nce bashed his own teeth in with a stone and died a couple of days later.

“I Speak Fula” is an arrangement of “Koreduga,” a Bamana song in which you can say anything! “If you can’t run, you shouldn’t chase after married women. If you can’t run fast and the husband catches you, you’ll be dead. You say that I don’t speak Fula? I was born and raised in a Fula village. Let me pull you into the hut, touch your haunches, and you’ll see how well I speak Fula!” This playful, mocking song was named after a ruler at the time of the Bamana Empire and refers to the relationship between the Bamana and Fula—two ethnicities in Segu. The Bamana ruled the region from 1712 to 1861, but afterwards the Fula gained power. It was the rulers and their armies who fought; in the villages, the Fula and Bamana had actually been living together harmoniously, as they still do.

“Musow—For Our Women” is in thanks to women, who take care of our children, their husbands, their houses, and all of the food. It is they who gave birth to our children. They gave birth to us all.

“Falani” means “the little orphan.” Bassekou remembers a song being sung to him by his mother when he was about to be circumcised. It was 4 AM and the boys were all standing in a row near a bush in the dark outside his village. They were afraid, but they didn’t know what was about to happen to them. They had been told that a big serpent would swallow them up and vomit them into hot water. At this moment, the mothers sang an unaccompanied song from a distance in the dark to encourage their sons to be brave; if they ran or showed cowardice, later on in life they would never get a wife. Bassekou’s mother sang this song. She was crying because she knew what her son was about to go through and that after he was healed, he would come back to her as a young adult—her little son would be gone forever. Bassekou’s mother had to be taken hold of and dragged away. The song is called “the little orphan,” because the boy is the only one who runs away—he has no mother to sing him through his fear. The night before a recording session, Bassekou dreamed about this song, and decided to arrange it for his album.

“Ladon” means “to educate” in the widest sense, relating not just to formal school, but to raising children with good values and manners. If you educate a child well, he will become someone of consequence and the country will consequently progress. In other words, take care of the children—they are our future.

More Information:

A new voice from Africa, Kouyate is Mali’s leading virtuoso on the ngoni, a lute that griots traditionally played to accompany their storytelling. Now it’s a supple, rhythmic instrument, bringing Kouyate to international fame in collaborations with Ali Farka Toure, Carlos Santana, and U2. Taj Mahal calls him “a genius, a living proof that the blues comes from the region of Segu.”

Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba
Bassekou Kouyate

Bassekou Kouyate, a master of the ngoni, has brought great attention to this ancient instrument through his innovations, concerts, and recordings. He was born in 1966 in Garana, a remote village on the banks of the Niger River at the heart of the old Bamana Empire. He was raised in a traditional musical environment: His mother, Yakare Damba, is a praise singer, and his father, Moustapha Kouyate, was an exceptional ngoni player.

When Bassekou was 19 years old, he moved to Bamako where he met kora player Toumani Diabaté. By the late 1980s, he was part of Toumani’s trio and they recorded their first albums together: Songhai and Djelika. He has played in the Symmetric trio alongside Toumani and Kélétigui Diabaté (balafon), and was also a part of the Kulanjan project with Toumani and Taj Mahal (whom he met in 1990 during his first visit to the US for a banjo festival in Tennessee).

Bassekou toured worldwide as the solo ngoni player in Ali Farka Touré’s band, and was one of the key musicians on Ali Farka Touré’s posthumous Savane album. He appeared on Youssou N’Dour’s album Rokku mi Rokka and Dee Dee Bridgewater’s Red Earth, and was featured on Béla Fleck’s Throw Down Your Heart, which won this year’s Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album.

After years as a sideman to many musicians both in Mali and globally, Bassekou put together his own band, Ngoni Ba (meaning “the big ngoni”), Mali’s first ngoni quartet. In February of this year, Bassekou and Ngoni Ba released I Speak Fula (Next Ambiance / Sub Pop). They are currently touring the US for the first time.

Bassekou is married to Amy Sacko (called the “Tina Turner of Mali”); the two are in great demand for traditional wedding parties in the streets of Bamako.

·· Bassekou Kouyate, Lead Ngoni
·· Fousseyni Kouyate, Medium Bass Ngoni
·· Barou Kouyate, Ngoni
·· Moussa Bah, Bass Ngoni (Ngoniba)
·· Amy Sacko, Vocals
·· Alou Coulibaly, Calabash
·· Moussa Sissoko, Percussion