2011 - Fatoumata Diawara - Maliba

2011 - Fatoumata Diawara - Maliba (Flac)

The city of Timbuktu, in northern Mali, is home to a massive collection of manuscripts, some dating back more than 600 years. During the country’s armed rebellion of 2012, members of the militant Islamist group Ansar Dine seized Timbuktu and began destroying the artefacts on the grounds that they were idolatrous. Residents smuggled many of the treasures out of the city so that they could be hidden and dispersed into private hands. Ansar Dine were driven out in 2013, and since then projects to reconstruct the collections have proceeded. Fatoumata Diawara’s digital album Maliba forms the soundtrack to an online presentation of the manuscripts on Google Arts and Culture which tells the story of their preservation.

The Malian singer-songwriter started her solo career in 2011 with the irrepressibly joyous Fatou, and has combined music with acting: in Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2014 film Timbuktu, set during the 2012 occupation, she embodies the spirit of the city.

Her songs ripple outwards from the manuscripts, celebrating the city, education, the role of women, and national and global unity. “One day”, she sings in English before switching to Bambara, “We will realise/That the manuscripts in our possession/Have great significance.” Kamele ngoni prickles around the edge of the wistful crack in her voice; string glissandi swoop and glide unobtrusively in the background. On the title track, to a swaying hand-clapped rhythm and wah-wah guitar, she pleads “let’s help Mali become a developed country”. The rapper Master Soumy (familiar to Western audiences from the film Mali Blues) chimes in: “I owe my humanity and honour to Timbuktu/Mali, Africa, Europe, it belongs to everyone.” Other voices chime in, singing in Tamasheq, the language of the Tuaregs — a musical illustration of Malian unity.

“Kalan”, with a pretty acoustic figure and a deep bassline, defends the importance of education, especially for women. “Let our girls be educated, mother/They may become government ministers/One day they may become doctors . . . One day they may even be presidents.” A light haze of synth lifts the chorus, then a lyrical, contemplative piano solo. “Save It”, with a desert lope that kicks up midway through into a harder, more aggressive groove with curls of strings, deals uncomfortably with the legacy of slavery and questions surrounding which parts of heritage are worth saving. The traditional beat of “Yakandi” is carried on clattering percussion, guitar and basslines woven through polyrhythmically. “I don’t discriminate, we are all the same/The Bambara is black, you are white/Let’s unite and march together.” (Financial Times)

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2011- Fatoumata Diawara - Fatou

 2011- Fatoumata Diawara - Fatou (Flac)

In her teens, Fatoumata Diawara moved to France to pursue an acting career. She appeared in a handful of films and worked with a street theater troupe but really found her calling later, when she took up the guitar and started writing songs. Born in Cote d'Ivoire and raised in southern Mali, Diawara grew up hearing Wassoulou music, a song style that's thought by some ethnomusiclogists to be one of the main pre-colonial ancestors of blues. The Wassoulou cultural area is now split between three countries, but it has a history that extends back centuries, and Diawara merges that long, traditional history with a modern, globalized sensibility on her debut album.

Diawara has honed her performing and recording craft through work with AfroCubism, Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, and Herbie Hancock, among others, so really the big step here is to recording her own songs with her own arrangements. She has a voice with a naturally sensual glide to it that sometimes reminds me a little of Sade. Unlike many of her peers, such as Oumou Sangaré, power is not really a part of her style-- she keeps her singing even and steady to complement the hypnotic, cycling guitar parts of her arrangements. The album is quietly intense, rarely rising above the volume of ordinary conversation.

Diawara sings in her native Wassoulou language, but understanding the exact content of the songs isn't necessary to enjoy them. There's plenty of information in the melodies and rhythms, and inventive musicianship as well. Diawara locks in with the simmering funk backdrop of "Bissa" by playing harmonics on her guitar instead of full chords. The electric leads seem to float up out of the patterns; several times over the course of the album, I found myself caught up in a flowing solo that I didn't even notice when it started. This is how the whole record works. There's no fanfare, nothing is announced. It simply surrounds you with its atmosphere.

It is an ultimately beguiling album because of this. Even in its most demonstrative moments, such as the shivering lead guitar line that opens "Bakonoba", it's a record you can sink into and enjoy for its sonics as well as its songwriting. "Bakonoba" is among the songs with the strongest West African character, and that guitar is a big part of it-- it's reminiscent of the type of lead Malian guitarists Djelimady Tounkara or Kanté Manfila might have once laid down for the Rail Band. Otherwise, Diawara is one of a growing number of musicians working on a sort of pan-folk sound that incorporates influences from across a broad Afro-Western cultural spectrum. It's an approach that may be a better fit for the "world music" label than any of the highly localized sounds that tag's often applied to. (Pitchfork)

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