Q&A with Trio Da Kali

 
Q. Could you describe for your English fans what your home town is like?

A.    All three members of the trio have their homes in Bamako, the capital of Mali which has grown enormously in the last 20 years.  There are probably around 3 million inhabitants and like in all large cities, it is divided into small districts, each with its own character.  Hawa lives on the edge of ACI 2000, a modern ward with new hotels and office buildings.  Her home is in the more traditional housing area with connections to the zone leading directly to the River Niger.  There are many artisans in her area producing metalwork, carpentry and clothing.  There is a well-organized football school nearby that has over 1,000 boys playing under supervision at weekends and during school holidays.

Mamadou lives in Banconi, one of the first areas to attract people arriving from the countryside as they built houses, often in places determined by space on the rocky outcrop to the north of Bamako.  The area is now very densely populated.  It has many musicians living in the area and Mamadou has started his own studio which is very popular with young musicians making their first recordings, as well as others that are already well-known.

The area of Yirimajo, to the south of the River Niger, is the subject of one of Lassana’s recent songs that Hawa sings on the Trio’s new EP.  It has grown since the huge 26 March Stadium was built there for the African Nations’ Cup matches in 2000.  Now the area has been divided into lots on a planned street grid and there is much modern building and Lassana’s new house is among these developments.  Most of the families in this area are very young, and there is a large population of children and youth – who include many musicians you can see on motorbikes, carrying guitars, Kamalen Ngonis and huge Bobo balafons, as they drive to rehearsals and performances.

Q.  Hawa, you have a beautiful voice! Who has influenced the way you sing?

A.  Thank you.  It is really important to me to know that I am playing in the Mande tradition.  Of course, it is my father Kassé Mady Diabaté who is still my main influence.  He is known now as one of the most important singers in the tradition of the griot singers of the Mande area.   But he was influenced by his aunt, Siramory Diabaté who also showed me the way to sing the huge repertoire of their village, Kela, in the way that the whole Mande world felt was right.  This area spread over most of West Africa, including what is now Guinea Bissau, Guinea, part of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and parts of other countries.  I try to follow their tradition and spent some of my childhood near their village, where everybody knew the traditional Mande songs and was quick to tell me the right way to sing them.  Now I am trying to teach my own daughters to sing in the same way.

Q. What was it like for you to play at the BBC Proms in London?

It was quite a challenge because this was the Trio’s very first public concert, and especially the first for Hawa as solo vocalist.  Plus we all come different kinds of groups: Hawa mainly with accompanying musicians (including her husband, Demba) at open air wedding parties, Mamadou as one of the 4 ngoni players in the Ngoniba group founded by his father, Bassékou Kouyaté, and Lassana as virtuoso balafon player with some of the most famous musicians in Africa and beyond.  Some of the audiences for Making Tracks may remember his part in the UK appearances by Afrocubism – a remarkable combination of Cuban and Malian stars.  The Proms Concert in the vast Albert Hall helped convince us that we really are an ensemble.  Thanks to this great experience in London, we gained confidence and resolve to maintain our pledge to perform our art at its best – the meaning of Da Kali.

Q.  Can you describe the instruments, the Balafon and the ngoni that you use in the Trio?

The balafon:  in fact I use two balafons one beside the other to give the full chromatic range of traditional and modern music.  Each has 22 keys carved of a tropical hardwood, the “guénou” that is also called rosewood – the title of another composition on our new EP.  A succession of small calabashes is attached beneath the keys to act as resonators and it is this that gives the balafon its scope and power as an instrument to address the public.  We know it has been made in the same way since the 6th Century, and it is because of its resonance that can be heard over a distance that it has been used since then to accompany important community events.  For instance, it was the only instrument to accompany the procession leading the burial of a hero after he fell in battle, to accompany a chief being buried, to the opening of important meetings between communities, as well as public festivities for weddings and other village events.  Even now, when we leave a ceremony or a performance that lasts into the night when people are stopped by the police and asked for their papers and to account for what they have been doing; as soon as they see the balafon, we are automatically waved on: the police understand what we have been doing.

Mamadou plays the Ngoni, another ancient instrument found throughout West and North Africa.  Some people have said the original, small version looks rather like a cricket bat and it now has a hollowed out boat-like body, a skin covering and a wooden handle that supports the strings made of gut.  Originally the body was made of a calabash, but this is too fragile for use today.  Because there has only been amplification since the arrival of electricity, the ngoni was used to play for a patron or ruler (particularly the Bambara kings of Ségou) and was only heard by an élite group.  For centuries it has been a recognized instrument of the professional griot, and in the past when there were tensions between neighbouring areas, where others were questioned about their intentions, as soon as the griot arrived with his ngoni on his back, he was waved ahead on his journey.  With the arrival of amplification, recognized families of ngoni players began experimenting with the instrument’s capacity and range of sound.  In this way, Mamadou’s family has developed the large (and heavy) bass ngoni plucked to give a deep bass sound.  The instrument is still fairly unusual and he is known as one of the most inventive players.

In addition to singing, Hawa adds a traditional percussion instrument used by women.  This is the yabara, another calabash, the size of a large rounded bottle, upturned and strung with cotton threads to which cowrie shells or beads are attached forming a net around the instrument.  It is shaken on the beat and used particularly to keep a group of musicians in time, while the player adds it to her dancing and adds interest by tossing it in the air from time to time.

All of our instruments are traditional, and made of material that is found throughout the countryside, although the guénou is becoming rare and is in need of protection.

Q.  Can you say something about the songs you sing?  What role do they play in your culture?

Songs are so much part of our culture that there is one for almost every occasion.  Here are some of the types that you can hear in our performances and on our EP album:

We are all djeli – members of the oldest traditional praise-singing families – so our social role is to broadcast messages and reminders about living together in a community.  Our song “Ladilikan” is one of this group.  Although this has been accepted by our audiences in Mali since at least the 13^th Century, when you hear about the problems of establishing peace in the north of Mali, this is still an important message today and music is still one of the most effective ways to get people to listen and think about the subject.  They are intended to motivate people to seek community understanding.

In the same line, our songs surrounding marriage, giving simple advice to help people remember that marriage involves a commitment to living peaceably.  These songs are sung at big community parties on days around the wedding.  As most Malians still live in very large extended family groups, the new arrival (always the bride in Mali) involves adjustments of behaviour on both sides as the two families involved get used to living together.  There is always a danger of friction and the lyrics and music Hawa sings can help remind people that it is possible to live together harmoniously.  On our EP album, the song “Dissa Wale” underlines the change that marriage brings in a woman’s social status.

Of course, we sing about love, as in “Tita” and “Lila Bambo” both with particularly beautiful music.

A very important part of our music underscores traditional values, such as “Kankelentigui” which praises people who mean what they say, who are sincere.  We, too, have to remember to give the example of this behaviour.

Another group of songs, often very old ones, are work songs, encouraging people to work hard on the various sorts of manual work in a village.  These often concern collective work, repeating the rhythms of particular tasks, which can be speeded up to make people work faste.  The singer can also make movements to show she knows how to do the work.  You have a good example in “Namaniké” where Hawa shows just how to use a hoe for the hard work of tilling a field: you will see the hoe in her hands.  She says she learnt this work in her grandmother’s field in Kangaba.  The songs often praise the person who works hardest and is most productive in the group, as a way of encouraging the others to work harder.

But another group contains songs and other pieces that are newly composed, largely by Lassana.  Examples are our version of “Ladilikan” and the instrumental “Rosewood” composed for the Balafon.

Q.  You have played with the Kronos Quartet.  What did they learn from you and what did you learn from them?

What we all learned was to listen carefully to each other playing what at first looked like unfamiliar instruments, or sounded like unusually complex rhythms.  We were so astonished to hear the Kronos quartet playing our music when we arrived, and just like we do!  We had been nervous about this meeting because it had never occurred to us that this could be done with western instruments.  We could see that the person who transcribed our music from recordings in advance to enable the Kronos musicians to begin to play our music, made a vital contribution to working with the Trio Da Kali.  We now all respect and understand better the versatility of all the instruments: African and Western.  They included us in their 40^th anniversary concert in San Francisco in 2014 and we learned how serious music-lovers brought up on classical Western music could be really appreciative of our performance playing “Tita”.

Q.  You have recorded an EP with Lucy Duràn – how was that?

Well there were a few challenges because it was hard to find dates when it was possible for Lucy to travel to Mali and make the recording.  Then we had some adventures with the recording studios and engineers: the first was not available when Lucy was able to come to Bamako, the second studio had a huge local radio antenna right next door and we would have had “The Voice of the Mande” radio programmes included in our recording of the songs of the Mande!  Finally we moved with the excellent sound engineer to a colourful studio often used by the Rastafarians of Mali, and all went well!

Lucy is a friend for all of us, and we invited a few other musicians to join us.  In this way we discovered a wonderful new combination in the introduction to Yrimajo where Lassana’s balafon plays with virtuoso Kamalen Ngoni artist Harouna Samaké.  It is one of the great moments of the EP album.

By the end of the recording, all the musicians and technicians were really excited by the product. We are all professionals and we take pride in our work, so we hope the fans will agree, too and buy the album!

Q.  This is your first tour of the UK – what, apart from cold weather- do you hope to see?

It’s true this is the first UK tour for Da Kali although Lassana and Mamadou have made tours with other groups.  Outside London, everything will be new for Hawa and she loves seeing new scenery and sights.  We know we will be doing a lot of road travel and look forward to seeing the UK from the West Coast to the North East in winter – we will be well wrapped up.  What we are really coming to see are our audiences, and we hope the concert spaces will be full and that you will enjoy our new Trio. 

We are also looking forward to seeing old friends: British, Malian and others who have met us in Mali and other parts of the world.