Get the album here: http://glitterbeat.com/glitterbeat_store/

Aminata Wassidjé Traoré is a rising voice in Mali. Tamala is her debut album, recorded in Bamako and released in 2009. Born in Diré, near the fabled city of Timbuktu, Aminata was raised within northern Mali’s rich cultural brew. From an ethnic Songhai family, Aminata started singing as a young child. Her music, like the environment that surrounded her growing up, incorporates various cultures and traditions. On Tamala, an album she self-produced with the help of the artist Mamadou Kelly and arranger Baba Simaga, she sings in Songhai and Tamasheq.

While northern Mali still suffers the repercussions of religious and ethnic warfare, Tamala sends a message of reconciliation and inclusion. Aminata believes people can work together for a solution, and sees the vast potential of Mali’s diverse north. Moving to the Southern capital of Bamako not only enabled her to develop as a musician, backing up well known artists like Baba Salah, Khaira Arby and Afel Bocoum, it also enhanced her vision of a diverse and connected Mali.

Tamala is considered a neo-traditional album in the context of the Malian music scene: it is rooted in northern folk musical traditions, but arranged in a contemporary way and mixes drum programming and synthesizers with the banjo-like n'goni and the sokou, a one-string violin. Hints of Hip Hop and electronic dance music sit side by side with the pentatonic sounds of the interior Niger delta.

Afropop Worldwide wrote this about Tamala:
“And then there’s the music—in a word, sublime…solos burst forth with forthright clarity and consistent eloquence. Western sounds and production techniques have been appropriated here, but the melodic phrasing, rhythms and modalities in the music are 100% local.”

In 2013, Aminata began a collaboration with Glitterbeat Records when she appeared on the album Troubles by the Austrailian/American group Dirtmusic. The Guardian (UK) noted in their enthusiastic review of the album that »La Paix, an impassioned cry against the terrorist invasion of Mali, is voiced thrillingly by Aminata Traore.”

Glitterbeat Records is releasing Tamala in a limited vinyl version of 1,000. It will be pressed on 180g vinyl with a gatefold sleeve. The album is coming out in cooperation with Studio Mali, a Bamako based label.

www.facebook.com/Wassidje

www.glitterbeat.com
www.facebook.com/Glitterbeat
www.youtube.com/user/glitterbeattv


Aminata Wassidjé Traoré - Tamala

BKO Quintet’s music is born from a meeting between five established artists.
This gathering provides a journey into the heart of the contemporary Mali. 

Ibrahima Sarr, powerful percussionist, masters with ease the sounds of the djembe drum and has traveled the world alongside Oumou Sangare.  Fassara Sacko whose voice takes you from aback, differs from other griots in traditional celebrations. Yoro Sidibé’s grandson, Nfali Diakité , with his infernal « tournes », also sings and plays his donsongoni in animist ceremonies celebrated by his peers.  Abdoulaye Kone, master of djelingoni develops a unique psychedelic style.  He is the descendant of Djeli Baba Sissoko, and has been solicited before this quintet by great artists like Tiken Jah Kafoly, Salif Keita to tour outside of the Mali borders.  Finally Aymeric Krol, experienced of internationals stages grooves on its strange drums. For the past 10 years he often settled in Bamako where he worked with several artists. Today, his encounter with Ibrahima Sarr gives birth to the project: BKO Quintet.

The first EP recorded « Live » in January 2012 in Bamako in the popular district of Medina Coura.  In the new edition, some tracks recorded in January 2013 have been added to the EP. The present arises from the past, this « inhabited » music is far from the « World » standardized sound.

After a European tour of 25 dates, BKO QUINTET decides to return in the studio during their tour to record a debut album that will be available in 2014.

03 Strange Wassolon

07. Orchestra Baobab - Werente Serigne (1989)

Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba: Ba Power
Release date: April 24th 2015
Glitterbeat Records
www.glitterbeat.com

Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba’s fourth album Ba Power (and his first for Glitterbeat Records) is a striking, career defining record marked by mesmerizing songs, razor-sharp riffs and full-throttle emotions. Following two years of worldwide touring for the much heralded Jama Ko album, Bassekou’s band, Ngoni Ba, has turned up the volume and dynamics significantly and Bassekou’s masterful ngoni playing has achieved a new level of intensity that can only be called: afro-rock. Distortion and wah wah and propulsive rhythms are now the defining backbone of his songs and the heat lightning vocals of his wife Amy Sacko, more than ever serve as the passionate and perfect foil. This is not the same Ngoni Ba. This is indeed: Ba Power.

When asked what Ba Power means to him, Bassekou told us:
"Ba", in Bambara means "strong" or "great" and it also means "group.” I called the album Ba Power because I think the messages on it are very important and strong, and it is also definitely the album with the toughest sound I've ever made. I want these songs to grab as many people as possible.”

Without question Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba has revolutionized the sound and narrative possibilities of the ngoni, the lute-like instrument that is essential to Mali’s Griot culture. Griots are esteemed musician/storytellers whose lineage stretches back centuries. Bassekou was born into this resonant tradition but his relationship to it has been anything but static. From the beginning of his career, through his invention of a previously unheard repertoire built around the melodies and rhythms of four interlocking (and at times electric) ngonis, Bassekou has demonstrated his respect for the past by radically pulling it into the future. 

Ba Power contains all the swagger, precision and wide-eyed excitement that the title implies. It is the album where Bassekou’s music engages with the world in ways he could have only imagined 10 years before. It is the album where he confirms his status amongst the 21st centuries most relevant musical artists.

I think African music and culture deserve to be spread to the broadest audience possible.
That is what I want to accomplish with Ba Power.
--Bassekou Kouyaté


Bassekou Kouyaté & Ngoni Ba - Siran Fen

Beautiful Zimbabwean song with mbira on new label Nyami Nyami, specialized in Southern African music.
Limited 12inch including a Shabazz Palaces remix on B side. Available from sofarecords.fr

Chiwoniso : Zvichapera

Renouveau - Amadou Balaké et Les 5 consuls

11 I PLAY THE KORA (Rokia Koné, Mamani Keita, Nneka, Kandia Kouyaté, Mariam Doumbia)

Become a fan of Rio Mira:

www.facebook.com/RioMiraMarimba/

Co-produced by Grammy nominee Ivis Flies and Grammy winner Ivan Benavides, Rio Mira is a marimba supergroup with Afro-Pacific binational heritage consisting of some of the most in-demand and respected musicians from Colombia and Ecuador. Their music is the sonic rejoining of the region known as El Pacífico Sur, one connected by history, ecology and culture and divided by the national borders of Ecuador and Colombia.

The people throughout this area have similar music, food, speech, fashion, and background, and it is no coincidence that the band takes its name from the Mira River that flows across these borders, connecting rather than dividing people and cultures. This area is home to a great many people of African descent and the rhythms of Africa have become entwined with the lilt and grooves of Colombia and Ecuador. Marimba music has become firmly established, a sound so sacred it was added to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2015.

Marimba Del Pacifico is a beguiling showcase of this protected sound, a celebration of a unique cultural heritage found nowhere else on the planet, by a band of young musicians keeping this strong tradition alive.

Rio Mira - Guarapo

Arat Kilo - Dia Barani - Version Album
extrait de Visions of Selam : sortie le 16 mars 2018
Accords Croisés / PIAS
Composition Arat Kilo / Mamani Keîta / Mike Ladd
Enregistrement : Frederic Carrayol - Studio Mercredi 9
Mixage : Frederic Soulard - Studio Mechant
Mastering : Chab

Arat Kilo / Mamani Keîta / Mike Ladd - Dia Barani - Version Album

Taken from the album "Matchowé"
Seminal Manding-Jazz session from the leading saxophonist of Guinea’s golden age. 
Recorded in 1991 and unavailable on vinyl until now, “Matchowé” is one of the most important “Afro Jazz” sessions recorded - the culmination of a lifetime’s work investigating the intersection between the American jazz tradition and the traditional rhythms of Guinea. 

Drawing influences from Charlie Parker and John Coltrane and blending them with the rhythms of the Soussou and Bagas ethnic groups of Guinea, Momo 'Wandel' Soumah (1926-2003) created a timeless sound over a 5-decade career that still resonates today. 
Starting out playing the banjo in regional orchestras before moving to Conakry and teaching himself to play the clarinet in 1951, he came to the fore as part of the successful band Keletigui et ses Tambourins in the 60s - part of President Sekou Touré’s mission to revalorize traditional Guinean music by blending it with (similarly-communist) Cuban rhythms for the state-run Syliphone record label. With the beginning of the second Guinean Republic in 1985, Momo brought his life-long love of jazz to the traditional rhythms he had spent so much time researching. 

Matchowé is not the first time this musical mixture had been attempted by Momo – he played and important part in the seminal 1976 “Musiques sans Paroles” album on Syliphone, Guinea’s state-funded record label – but it is perhaps his defining statement.

Matchowé

Buy Vinyl & Digital

Afro blue - Momo Wandel Soumah

Mulatu Astatke (born 1943; surname sometimes spelled Astatqé) is an Ethiopian musician and arranger best known as the father of Ethio-jazz.

Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics - An Epic Story

Real World Records was founded by WOMAD and Peter Gabriel to provide talented artists from around the world with access to state-of-the-art recording facilities and audiences beyond their geographic region.

Launched in 1989, Real World Records has grown into a label of wide-ranging, world-class music from all corners of the globe.

11 I PLAY THE KORA (Rokia Koné, Mamani Keita, Nneka, Kandia Kouyaté, Mariam Doumbia)

Real World Records

Recent comments

Jainaba Rodewald

Thierno Cisse

Thierno Cisse

Thierno Cisse

Related tracks