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Today, west-African bands are celebrated across the world - all thanks to one music-mad president
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The Guardian (London), Today, west-African bands are celebrated across the world - all thanks to one music-mad president >>
It should have been one of the great events in the history of African music: the three great veteran bands of west Africa, playing on the same bill for the first time. From Senegal there was Orchestra Baobab, now as famous in the west as they were in Dakar in the 1970s. From Mali had come the Super Rail Band of Bamako, formed in the late 1960s and still led by the great guitarist Djelimady Tounkara. And from Guinea there was Bembeya Jazz, who started out in the early 1960s and have their own guitar hero, Sekou Diabate, known throughout Africa as Diamond Fingers.
The first session at the Angouleme festival in France was to feature Bembeya and Baobab playing back to back, but when the lighting rig collapsed (thankfully, no one was on stage), the concert had to be abandoned. Backstage, Bembeya's trumpeter and chef d'orchestre, Mohamed Kaba, teased the Baobab band. "It's Allah's will. He knows that Baobab could never follow Bembeya, because we're too strong for you and he doesn't want you shown up."
This summer, in Britain, the battle of the African guitar veterans continues. Orchestra Baobab are not involved - they toured Britain last year - but Bembeya Jazz and the Rail Band will be playing together, each determined to show that their veteran guitarist is the best. All three bands provide a reminder of the extraordinary music scene that existed in west Africa before the world music boom: they are products of the wildly idealistic (if sometimes dictatorial) system by which the state encouraged and controlled musicians.
From Senegal, where Leopold Senghor's policy of "Negritude" included the promotion of African music (thus helping the young Baobab band), through to Zaire, where Mobutu's "Authenticite" campaign gave musicians generous state sponsorship, the early years of independence were marked by government moves to create a new African music scene. Nowhere was the policy introduced with greater enthusiasm than in Guinea, where Sekou Toure became the first president in 1958, determined to create regional and national bands that would drive out the dominant colonial styles. "We had our traditional music," says Diabate, "but all our dance music was European. The president said we had to integrate our roots and our rhythms and make our own music for dancing, parties and pleasure. For me, it was very good politics."
Bembeya Jazz started out as a regional band, and Diabate was virtually forced to join them. A young guitar hero in his home town of Kamkam, he was noticed by Emile Conde, the regional government official for Beyla, who was putting together a local state band. "He was a friend of my father, and he loved music, so I was told to go to Beyla to join this band. You know how it is in Africa. Only one of the Bembeya Jazz line-up actually came from Beyla."
From 1961 to 1966, the government paid Bembeya Jazz's salaries and provided equipment, "because at that time people didn't have the means to make music. The instruments were expensive and the public had no money to buy records or go to concerts - it had to be supported by the state." But when the band won a national competition in the capital, Conakry, they stopped being Beyla's local state band and became a Conakry-based national band - "along with the female band, the Amazones, the police band and the Republican Guard Band". They played at conferences, banquets, meetings of heads of state, and at the capital's dance halls, where Diamond Fingers built his increasingly individual style, mixing African and Cuban influences, and even using Hawaiian slide guitar. "We were like functionaries, state employees," he says. "However many people turned up, we were paid the same - but we were paid well, like a doctor or a senior official."
I suggest that the band's former sponsor is now remembered mostly for his isolationist policies and brutal dictatorial rule, but Diabate is having none of it. "Sekou Toure was a cultivated man. He had his critics, but he supported music and artists had easy access to him. When there was a music festival, he would come every night, even if it lasted two weeks. He would take notes. He knew what was good and bad about the music. He was a great African."
Toure also influenced other African heads of state. Modibo Keita, the first president of Mali, set up his own system of state-sponsored bands after visiting Guinea. Djelimady Tounkara started his career playing in a regional band, Misra Jazz; when he was talent-spotted by a minister, he joined Mali's national orchestra. They toured "all the communist countries that were friends of Modibo - we went to Moscow, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary". As with Bembeya Jazz, the style had to be based on local traditional songs; Djelimady's guitar work echoed local instruments such as the n'goni, while mixing in jazz, blues, Latin and Congolese influences. "Latin-American music was OK because that's based on Africa," he says, "and of course Cuban music was allowed because the president liked Castro."
Unlike Toure, Keita didn't survive for long. After the coup in 1968, the new president, Moussa Traore, ended state support for the national orchestra. It was at this point that the Malian Railway Company moved in. The railway owned the station hotel in the Malian capital, the Bamako Buffet Hotel de la Gare, whose director happened to be the ex-president's brother-in-law. Djibril Diallo was determined to save Malian musical culture - and so the Rail Band was born. Djelimady became a key member, "paid by the month by the hotel, who in turn were paid by the state-owned Railway Company. So I was a railway worker." The band became an African institution, launching the careers of two of Africa's greatest singers, Salif Keita and Mory Kante.
Would west African music have flourished without such sponsorship? Both Diabate and Djelimady come from the families of griots, traditional musicians, and agree that they would have kept playing anyway, but at a local level. Bamba Dembele, the Rail Band's percussionist and manager, insists that the policy changed everything. "Foreign music was taking over and Malian music would have been swamped. It would not have survived if our first president had not created that policy."
For Christian Mousset, who has produced both bands, it's not that simple. "It was comfortable for musicians like Bembeya to be given instruments and somewhere to play, but they had to sing the praises of the government. Even the Rail Band was controlled by the railway officials. They weren't very well paid and no one took care of them." Both bands were eventually privatised. Bembeya was denationalised and given its own club shortly before Toure's death in 1984, while the Super Rail Band left railway employment in 1995.
Now both bands are hoping to match Orchestra Baobab's success with western audiences. Their head-to-head shows in the UK will be a crucial test - not to mention an intriguing contest. For Mousset, Bembeya Jazz is "the stronger of the three west African veteran bands - the more funky", while their star, Diamond Fingers, a showman who plays guitar on his knees or on his back, is "like an African Albert King". The Rail Band, meanwhile, are "good but irregular. But Djelimady has better taste. He's more traditional than Sekou - he's an African BB King."
At Angouleme, Djelimady was in dazzling form, though the dance styles of the Rail Band don't give him a chance to show off his solo acoustic work. Like all these veterans who started out in a state-run system where contests between bands were crucial to their careers, he is determined that the Rail Band should come off best. Diamond Fingers is no less competitive. "We are the big brothers of Africa. They are our younger brothers, so there's no competition," he claims. "If there is, we'll kick them up the backside - hard."
The Super Rail Band of Bamako and Bembeya Jazz play the Coal Exchange, Cardiff (0292-0494917), on Saturday, the Barbican, London EC2 (020-7638 8891), on Sunday, and the Womad festival, Reading (0118-939 0930), on July 25-27. Super Rail Band's album Kongo Sigui is out on Label Bleu/Indigo.
07/03/03
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