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Mali superstar offers only his talent
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The Plain Dealer, Mali superstar offers only his talent >>
Habib Koite is a superstar in Mali, his West African homeland. But he brought none of the trappings or attitudes of celebrity to his engaging performance Friday night with his band Bamada at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
A large man with luxuriant dreadlocks, Koite strolled onstage wearing colorful Malian clothing, playing his guitar and singing with the naturalness and ease of a traditional griot paying a visit to an African village. Although he comes from a distinguished family of griots (the oral historians of West Africa), Koite is a world musician who blends the rhythms, melodies, instruments and languages of Mali with the influences of blues, jazz, rock and Latin music and the contemporary sounds of guitars, electric bass and drum kit.
The program book noted that the songs would be announced from the stage. But Koite did not speak to the audience until he and his colleagues had performed several numbers and established rapport with their infectious rhythms, soothing sonorities and hummable tunes.
The five assisting musicians entered one by one, taking up their instruments and chiming in on backing vocals. Koite involved the enraptured crowd in a wordless call-and-response simply by lifting his resonant voice in a catchy phrase, then cupping his hand to his ear and waiting for the communal reply.
A couple of his musicians showed how easy it is to learn Malian polyrhythms by dividing the audience in half and leading contrapuntal clapping patterns. Later, uninhibited dancers from the audience accepted the artists' invitation to come up onstage and throw themselves into the music. By the last encore, everyone in Gartner Auditorium was moving his feet, shoulders, arms and hands as all joined in a joyous dance led by Koite.
When the artist spoke to the audience in broken English, he talked about celebrating New Year's for the last 52 days and experiencing the dramatically different effects of the February sun in sub-Saharan Africa and the American Midwest. He urged the crowd to applaud longer so he could periodically retune his guitar. He introduced a song about money by describing the African version of Tylenol.
He translated the meaning of "Ma Ya," a statement about humanity and the title track of his first internationally distributed album. But he needed no translation to communicate the message of "Cigarette Abana," the Spanish-flavored anti-smoking song that first made him famous in Mali.
The five musicians of Bamada connected with the crowd, too, as they performed with virtuosity and projected plenty of personality. Keletigui Diabate played the balafon (African marimba) with the improvisatory freedom of a jazz musician, then switched effortlessly to violin or shekeree. Mahamadou Kone danced with fluidity as he produced irresistible rhythms on the tama (talking drum) and other percussion instruments. Aboudl Wahab Berthe, tall and commanding, alternated between electric bass and kamale n'goni (West African lute). Boubacar Sidibe perched on a stool to play rhythm guitar and bluesy harmonica. Souleymane Ann stayed in the background, where he was equally at home on drum set and calabasse (bass drum made from a gourd).
The program as a whole came closer to pop music than other concerts that are part of the museum's excellent Viva! Festival of Performing Arts, and it brought the receptive audience a welcome dose of West African warmth, humor and high spirits.
02/24/03
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