African
musicians don’t need outside help. Lately,
Nigerian Afrobeats, South African
amapiano and other sleek, high-tech, thoroughly danceable styles have reached
listeners worldwide without Western mediators. But the proof of a collaboration
is in its sound, not its pedigree, and the album “Bamanan” is a
transcontinental alliance that finds its own synergy.
اضافة اعلان
“Bamanan” pairs
Rokia Koné — a songwriter and singer from Mali who was a core member of the
West African collective Les Amazones d’Afrique on their 2017 album “Republique
Amazone” — with Garret “Jacknife” Lee, an Irish producer who has worked with U2
and Taylor Swift and is now based in California.
Koné’s voice
rightfully leaps out of every song. Drawing on West African griot style, she sings
with gritty insistence, building up to a sandpapery rasp when her melodies hit
their peaks. Her Malian band provides percussion, backup vocals and barbed,
modal lead-guitar parts that hint at traditional African instruments. Lee adds
keyboards, guitars, and drumbeats, placing the songs in a swirling, spacious
digital realm.
It’s an equal
partnership that’s clearly enacted in the opening song, “Bi Ye Tulonba Ye”
(“Today Is a Great Party”), a call for unity and an end to disagreements. At
the beginning, Koné’s vocals are an urgent incantation amid reverent, hovering
synthesizer tones, with a steady beat that slowly reveals itself. But the song
lifts off as her band joins in, surrounding her with rhythmic and melodic
crosscurrents of percussion and guitars.
“Bamanan” (Real
World) was constructed gradually and remotely; Koné and Lee never met in person
while making the album. During the pandemic, sessions that Koné and her band
had recorded in 2016 and 2018 — vocals in Paris, instruments in Mali — were
sent to Lee after he heard Les Amazones when judging a remix contest. In 2020,
Lee added instrumental parts and production to Koné’s sessions, and he
collaborated on a new song with Koné, “N’yanyan.”
Koné sang the
vocals for “N’yanyan” in
Mali in August 2020, on the day a coup toppled Mali’s
government. Her melody is based on an ancient song; Lee’s production provides
simple, sustained electric-piano chords. On a day of political upheaval, Koné
thoughtfully counseled taking a long view while reflecting on mortality: “This
life is passing / It’s only a moment in time,” she sang in Bambara, the
language she uses throughout the album.
The sweep of
history and a sense of indignation both course through “Bamanan.” Although she
does not come from a hereditary griot family, Koné writes like a griot: a
cultural guardian recalling history and speaking as a community conscience.
“Bamanan” is named after the Bamana Empire, two centuries when Bambara leaders
ruled much of what is now Mali. “Anw Tile” (“It’s Our Time”) meshes modal
guitar curlicues and glimmering synthesizers as Koné and her backup singers
chronicle the empire’s leaders and geography: “This time is golden,” women’s
voices declare in unison. “Those who missed it, it was a great time.”
The album also
extends the forthright feminism Koné shared with Les Amazones. “Mayougouba”
(“Move, Dance”) joyfully tells women worldwide, “You’re perfect as you are.”
The album’s most kinetic song, “Kurunba,” paces its call-and-response vocals
with galloping percussion and quick synthesizer ripples, as Koné’s narrator
rails at being cast aside by her husband after raising their child: “Now my
child is of age / Suddenly the door is shut on me,” she reproaches.
Koné also remade a song
she brought to Les Amazones: “Mansa Soyari,” which celebrates female role
models and insists, “A country isn’t great without women.” With Les Amazones,
the song was swaggering, distorted, psychedelic rock; with Lee, it’s lighter,
more syncopated and more transparent, invoking the kora (harp-guitar) patterns
of griot songs, but also hinting at funk and flaunting some otherworldly
digital manipulations. With its deep Bambara foundations, the song is certain
of where it comes from; it’s just as certain that its passion will be
understood anywhere.
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