Mali may be one in all Africa’s poorest nations, nevertheless it stays a musical superpower. The centre of the medieval Mande empire has been the breeding floor for dozens of worldwide success tales, together with the likes of Toumani Diabate, Ali Farka Toure, Rokia Traore, Oumou Sangare, Fatoumata Diawara, Boubacar Traore, Afel Bocoum, Bassekou Kouyate and Amadou & Mariam – to not point out Tuareg rockers like Tinariwen, Tamikrest and Songhoy Blues.
Salif Keita may be essentially the most well-known of all of them, however he was at all times the odd one out. Not solely was he an albino in a society that regarded albinos as cursed, however he was an outcast from a minor royal household, competing with storytelling griots who tended to return from an ancestral lineage of musicians. It helped that he was blessed with a unprecedented voice. Keita can flip a jerky, conversational, arhythmic lyric into one thing that flows completely; making any quantity of syllables match into no matter area he has, improvising like a jazz singer, including bluesy thrives and style notes, typically leaping up an octave or extra right into a spine-tingling register.
It’s a voice that has labored throughout a number of genres. He began out in 1970, singing Afro-Cuban son and Congolese soukous with the Rail Band; just a few years later he was performing rumbas, foxtrots, French ballads and Senegalese wolof songs with Les Ambassadeurs. In 1987 his breakthrough solo album Soro heralded the delivery of the digital griot, setting Keita’s voice towards a Peter Gabriel-ish backdrop of sampled koras and digi-drums. Since then he’s collaborated extensively – albums produced by Joe Zawinul, Vernon Reid and Wally Badarou; duets with the likes of Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter, Grace Jones, Esperanza Spalding, Bobby McFerrin, Roots Manuva, Richard Bona and Cesaria Evora. In 2018 he launched Un Autre Blanc – a closely synthesized, elaborately orchestrated studio album that includes Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Angelique Kidjo and Alpha Blondy – and introduced in interviews that, approaching his seventieth birthday, it could be his final LP.
That was till 2023, when he was invited to play an unplugged set at a pageant in Japan: simply voice and acoustic guitar, with occasional accompaniment on the ngoni (a form of harp-like banjo) and percussion. Keita liked the setting, realising that it introduced out a facet of him that had been hidden throughout his five-decade profession, and he reworked his resort suite into an impromptu studio to document this album.
So Kono – which interprets as “contained in the chamber” within the Mande language – is Keita’s most spartan LP but. He has at all times mentioned that he feels self-conscious about his guitar enjoying, seeing it purely as a software for songwriting, however right here it takes centre stage – hypnotic, advanced, repetitive patterns, performed clawhammer model, plucked with the flesh on the ideas of his fingers, like a medieval lute participant, often with a capo excessive on the fretboard.
A few of these songs rework older compositions. “Laban”, a bit of desert rock on his 2005 album M’Bemba, is became a splendidly baroque miniature, that includes a Martin Carthy-like guitar sample. The already fairly spartan “Tu Vas Me Manquer” (‘I’ll miss you’) sounds much more fantastically heartbroken, whereas “Tassi”, a bit of bubblegum Latin pop from his 2012 LP Talé, is became a hypnotic meditation. Often, Keita’s metrical, minimalist guitar patterns are set towards the florid, tumbling ngoni thrives of Badié Tounkara, like on the mild minor-key waltz “Awa”, which interprets as Eve, and serves as Keita’s tribute to womankind; the craving declaration of affection “Cherie”, which additionally options accompaniment on cello and speaking drum; or “Soundiata”, a mesmeric tribute to his royal ancestors.
There are tributes to pals. “Kanté Manfila” is devoted to a late bandmate of the identical title who was in Les Ambassadeurs, whereas “Aboubakrin” is called after a profitable politician. One is a eulogy, the opposite a joyful track of reward, however each have the identical temper – trance-like guitar patterns and hovering vocals that sound a muezzin’s name to prayer.
Most startling of all is the ultimate monitor “Proud”. Right here, as a substitute of enjoying acoustic guitar, Keita switches to a simbi, a Malian harp-lute, with a bulbous calabash physique. He performs a metallic, jangling riff whereas howling the lyrics – partly in English – on the higher finish of his vocal register, half historic bluesman, half Pakistani qawaali singer. “I’m African, I’m proud,” he howls. “I’m albino, I’m proud/ I’m totally different, I’m proud.” It’s a becoming summation of a outstanding profession.
