Celebrated Malian songwriter and guitarist Afel Bocoum gathers a slew of guests and collaborators for his latest release, Lindé. Named after the wild expanse near Bocoum’s hometown of Niafunké, Lindé is a blend of deep tradition and daring innovation. World music giants, executive producers Damon Albarn and World Circuit artistic director Nick Gold, are behind the album which was recorded in Mali’s capital Bamako and blends the age-old music of the Niger bend with styles from across the globe. Guests include numerous eminent Malian musicians including Madou Kouyaté, (N’goni bass on 6 tracks) the late ‘Hama’ Sankaré (Calabash on 8 tracks) and Madou Sidiki Diabaté (Kora on 2 tracks), along with the drums of the recently departed Afrobeat pioneer Tony Allen (drums w/solo on”Djoug”), the trombone of Vin Gordon (Bob Marley, Skatalites) (4 tracks) and the violin of Joan as Police Woman (3 tracks). In all, we count 37 participants in the credits.
Traditional instruments like the ngoni, njurkele, kora and calabash mix with guitars, percussion and call-and-response vocals. The result is a gently undulating flow, seemingly simple in terms of chords and rhythms but contagious and infectious in its own way. It’s music, typically in three-four-minute segments, that rolls rather than rocks, graceful, unforced and minimal by design. Like most albums from Mali and neighboring countries, it has a message born out of a homeland struggling with jihad, poverty and tribal war. Afel Bocoum urges hope, solidarity and unity. Bocoum says. “If we’re not united, I can see no solution. Our social security is music. That’s all we’ve got left. People love music, so we have to make use of that fact.”
The first single “Avion,’ which appears as Track 7 on the disc, like most is upbeat and hopeful, featuring a beat that’s close to Congolese soukous, with the guitars of Mamadou Kelly, Oumar Konaté and Lamine Soumano providing melodic propulsion. Along with the leader who plays guitar on four tracks, we count seven other guitarists but no more than three on any one selection. Think of the iconic Mali band Tinariwen and the legacy of Ali Farka Toure and you know that guitars are essential to that Malian hypnotic sound. And, like Tinariwen, this album is replete with chanting and call-and-response group and tribal-like vocals.
Every time we get a chance to write about Mali, the historical and cultural aspects are so deeply intertwined in the music, that it seems fitting to provide a perspective. Boucoum grew up in Niafunké in the Timbuktu region of Mali, an area that straddles the cultural riches and political tensions between the northern and southern areas of the country. He’s among the last of a breakthrough generation of African musicians who cross-pollinated their own traditional music with the new sounds that arrived from all over the world throughout the twentieth century, especially the latter half when world music grabbed a hold on U.S. listeners. Yet almost like the blues musicians in our South raised in strict religious families, aspiring musicians often faced strict parental disapproval in Mali, even in Bocoum’s case, whose father was one of the most famous njarka players of the twentieth century. But Bocoum wasn’t deterred; music was all around him, in the holey, or spirit dances, of Songhoy (with new album due in October), in the plaintive melodies of Fulani flute, and in the gumbé drum sessions with their wild moonlit dancing. “When you saw someone with a guitar, you followed him everywhere,” says Bocoum.
That guitarist he most followed was Niafunké’s greatest son, the singer and guitarist Ali Farka Touré. When he first met him in the late 1960s, Bocoum was barely a teenager and Touré was already famous. The young Bocoum hung out with Touré as much as he could, and eventually became a regular member of Asco, the name Touré had given his backing band. Bocoum toured with Touré and Asco throughout the 1980s and 1990s and appeared on Touré’s studio album The Source. The idea of releasing his own music arose from a gentle curiosity rather than any self-serving ambition or desire to upstage his mentor. Ali Farka Touré’s conversation with Nick Gold led to Bocoum’s 1999 debut, Alkibar (meaning “The Messengers”), establishing Bocoum as an international star. Due to the album’s success, Bocoum was invited to work with Damon Albarn and Toumani Diabaté on the 2002 album Mali Music. He went on to become a regular contributor to Africa Express and to collaborate with the likes of Béla Fleck, Habib Koité, Tartit Ensemble, Oliver Mutukudzi and many more. “You have to collaborate, otherwise you’ll get nowhere in today’s world,” Bocoum says. “All those collaborations were positive.”
Bocoum seems to have certainly mastered the art of collaboration judging on the assemblage gathered for this jubilant set.
