Toumani Diabaté "Kaira" (4.5*)

Twenty-five years after it appeared there’s not a lot that can be said about Toumani Diabaté’s first solo album except that it was cut in a single session, live and unaccompanied in a London studio in October 1987.

You could, I suppose, set about listing the tracks, all five of them  (Alla L'Aa Ke, Jarabi, Kaira, Konkoba, Tubaka) or say something bout their lengths (5:04 to 10:26) or mutter something about forty and a bit minutes of quite sublime music from a master of the 21-string West African harp-lute known as a kora.

Alternatively, you could mention the fact that Toumani comes from a line of seventy-plus masters of the instrument, and that Joe Boyd landed on this way ahead on the rest of us (released on his Hannibal label in 1988).

After that, you probably scratch your head and do what I’m inclined to do late at night with a glass of good red by my side and a book that needs to be read, pondered and digested.

Which is, of course, to press the play button again for another run through these five sublime instrumentals on an album I’m never likely to tire of.

Arnaldo Antunes, Toumani Diabaté & Edgard Scandurra "A Curva Da Cintura" (4*)

With this release it’s just about official. Following Kulanjan and Afrocubism, his collaborations with Ali Farka Toure, and his own work, solo or with the Symmetric Orchestra, Toumani Diabaté is another name on Hughesy’s buy anything this dude appears on list.

That’s because, on the evidence to date, Toumani Diabaté isn’t just a master of the kora, that West African cross between harp and lute, he’s also a master collaborator when it comes to cross-cultural musical experiments. As such, I can’t help comparing him to Robert Randolph, who’s probably my favourite sit in and jam instrumentalist. That may sound like a big call, but cast the peepers over this bit of YouTubeage from the Los Lobos Live at the Fillmore DVD. I’ve also seen him sit in with the Allman Brothers as well (though the footage doesn’t seem to have crept onto YouTube), and while he’s capable of taking a stinging lead with the best of them, the rest of the time you can see him looking for a spot where he can sneak a lick in, and when he does it’s managed with taste and dexterity.

Playing the much harder to amplify kora, of course, Toumani doesn’t get the chance to sling in stinging lead breaks, but through everything I’ve heard him collaborating on he manages to sneak things into the mix in much the same way as Mr Randolph. One suspects peer group recognition of this ability has a lot to do with frequent invitations to collaborate.

This time around, however, it seems to have been Toumani doing the inviting. After collaborating with Sao Paulo alternative rocker, songwriter, poet and artist Arnaldo Antunes and guitarist Edgard Scandurra at the 2010 Back2Black festival in Brazil, he invited the pair to record with him in Mali. They arrived in Bamako in April 2011 with a collection of songs they had written, and the result, once they’d got together with Diabaté and a selection of other Malian musicians, is an Afro-Brazilian fusion that doesn’t work in quite the same way as Kulanjan or Afrocubism.

Where those other collaborations brought traditional material from both sides of the fence and blurred them in together, here we’re looking at new territory as the Brazilian vibe is set against a different backdrop rather than taking a bit of samba and slipping it in among the Africanisms. We’re looking, in effect, at a Brazilian record with added tonality through the kora and balafon though there’s a reworking of Diabate's Kaira, and African vocals and instrumentation come to the fore on Ir, Mao.

Now, given the fact that the lyrics are in Portuguese, you’re not going to get a whole lot out of the words, so it’s probably best to treat the whole exercise as a soundscape, and while things are a little uneven, veering between fairly straightforward melodies and complex fills, laid back ballads and rocking psychedelia as Toumani's son Sidiki whacks his kora through a wah wah pedal.

The key elements on the Brazilian side of the soundscape are, predictably, Antunes’ voice and Scandurra’s guitar work (in both acoustic and electric modes) while the father and son kora combo, the vocals of Zoumana Tereta, Fode Lassana Diabaté’s balafon and Zoumana Tereta’s soku fiddle add the African light and shade. The result is an interesting listening experience that mightn’t be everyone’s cup of tea but will ensure I’ll be lining to hand over the readies when a new project with Toumani Diabaté’s name in the credits appears on the market.

Afrocubism (4.5*)

As stories of musicians' ill fortune go, it ranks not far from Leonard Cohen having to tour because his business manager stole his retirement savings. In 1996, Malian musicians Bassekou Kouyate and Djelimady Tounkara were invited by World Circuit Records' Nick Gold to Havana to record with a handful of Cuban singers and musicians. Depending who you talk to, lost passports, visa issues or better-paid gigs elsewhere ensured the Malian musicians never made it to Cuba.

Regardless of whether anything got recorded the studio had been booked and there was a bill that needed to be paid, and while the results after guitarist Eliades Ochoa matched an assortment of retirees with the session players assembled for the session were interesting, even an extreme optimist wouldn't have expected Buena Vista Social Club to sell more than eight million copies.

That success, along with the various spin-off projects that ensued, meant that it was a good fourteen years before Gold managed to get something like the line-up he's originally planned in one place to record. Full marks for persistence...

A blend of West African and Cuban elements might sound odd when you first come across it, but there's a general recognition that African music crossed the Atlantic on the slave ships and provided a basis for much of the music of the Americas, particularly the blues and jazz, though there are significant African influences in most variations on the Latin theme as well.

What's probably less well known is that the Latin, and particularly Cuban influences went back across the Atlantic, so you'll find significant Cuban influences in contemporary West African music. African liberation movements received substantial assistance from Cuba during the Cold War era, and nationalist leaders like Mali's Modibo Keïta promoted Cuban cultural influences as well. After all, as far as the Malians were concerned, the Cubans weren't French.

While the military-backed regime installed after the 1968 coup that overthrew Keïta encouraged authenticité through traditional African music, Cuban elements persisted in the background in outfits like Bamako's Rail Band, formed by the railway authorities to play near the main station for passengers waiting for their train.

Scheduling issues limited the recording sessions that produced Afrocubism to five days and ruled out lengthy rehearsals, so what's on offer here is drawn from seventeen tracks recorded live in the studio without additional overdubs or any similar frippery. 

In the intervening years a number of those who would have been in the original sessions have passed on, and here the personnel are Eliades Ochoa and members of his band Grupo Patria along with original Malian invitees Djelimady Tounkara (guitar) and Bassekou Kouyate (ngoni), and additional African stars in the shape of Toumani Diabate (kora), griot singer Kasse Mady Diabate and Lassana Diabate (balafon). 

For the uninitiated kora equates to a cross between a harp and a lute, the griot equates a combination of poet, musician and storyteller who maintains the oral tradition while the balafon equates to a xylophone.

While the material is split roughly fifty-fifty between Africa and Cuba, the predominant vibe is West African, with Cuban nuances added to the African material while the African elements weave their way into Cuban classics like Guantanamera. It's a case of one side playing their own music and the other side figuring out a way to fit in, so it's a genuine fusion of two not quite disparate elements, since there's a strong African influence in Cuban music which was then re-exported back to revolutionary Africa.

Toumani Diabaté claims the writing credit for the opening track, Mali Cuba, loosely based around the familiar Guantanamera with the kora tinkling away as the balafon lays out the melody and Latin brass adds a touch of the Caribbean. 

That's followed by Eliades Ochoa on vocals for Al Vaivén De Mi Carreta (The Swaying Of My Cart), the first track actually recorded for the album. Half way through griot Kasse-Mady Diabaté takes over the vocal, and the griot territory continues through Karamo (The Hunter) delivered with a Latin lilt. 

Guitarist Djelimady Tounkara leader of the Rail Band guides the ensemble through Djelimady Rumba, and he's back to the fore on La Culebra (The Snake) a Cuban afroson dating back to the thirties.

Jarabi (Passion) goes almost as far back, advocating romantic passion ahead of arranged marriage. It's apparently a popular item in the griot repertoire, but, again, the Cuban influence slots in comfortably with the African elements. Latin lilt strikes again.

Eliades Ochoa recorded the instrumental interlude Eliades Tumbao 27 in a break from group recording (I'm assuming the 27 has some significance there) before the percussion-heavy Dakan and the balafon-driven Nima Diyala (I Beg You My Sweetheart) where the message is to maintain personal relationships with dignity. It was, according to the digital booklet, a popular piece with West African dance bands in the seventies and features Lassana Diabate playing simultaneous balafons (with the second filling the role of the black keys on the piano).

A la luna yo me voy (I'm going to the Moon), a Haitian merengue written by Ochoa, expressing concerns about global warming is followed by Mariama, a studio jam involving Ochoa and Bassekou Kouyate with lyrics from a traditional song about destiny

Para Los Pinares Se Va Montoro (Montoro’s Going To Los Pinares) a Compay Segundo son from the 1950s has some fine guitar work from Eliades and Djelimady, Benséma (Chance) runs a Cuban guitar riff through a Malian reflection just how much of life is up to what I've been known to refer to as dumb luck and proceedings close with a languid ngoni, guitar and kora exposition of the Guantanamera theme that kicked off Mali Cuba. 

Afrocubism gives an almost seamless journey through a number of African and Cuban elements, and there's a chemistry there that could point the way for similar collaborations in the future.

If it does, I'll be buying...