Khaira Arby has been called the Nightingale of the Malian north, and the reigning musical queen of Timbuktu.  She is one of the most electrifying traditional singers in West Africa, and longtime passion for the West Africa hands at Afropop.  Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre first met Khaira in Timbuktu in 2000, and recorded and filmed her with her group at the Festival in the Desert.  We’ve been eagerly awaiting her arrival in the United States ever since, and at last, in the late summer of 2010, the moment has come!  Afropop’s Banning Eyre visited Khaira at the house in Harlem where she and her band have been staying during downtime on the Khaira Arby 2010 US tour.  Here’s their conversation.

Banning Eyre:  Khaira, welcome back to Afropop.  We haven't been together since the 2003 Festival in the Desert.  Now it's been seven years, and at last you're here in New York.

Khaira Arby.:  Truly. Thank God. I am very happy.  In 2003, we met at the Festival in the Desert, and we said that we would meet here in New York. But it's now that God has made it happen. Thank God. Seven years later, Khaira in New York! This is a great joy for me. And I'm very, very happy to find my friends from 2003. Thanks to God, and to Chris Nolan, and to my manager Mahmoud Arawani.  [Read Afropop’s interview with Mahmoud Arawani about the 2011 Festival in the Desert]

B.E.:  And thank you. I think you're going to find a lot of friends from the Festival the Desert as you travel around this country. Last night was your US debut at the Shrine in Harlem. How did it go?

K.A.:  It was great. It was hot. Truly, truly, truly, I found a very excited public.  I'm really happy. And I hope that all of the tour is just like that.

B.E.:  You think the American public is ready to understand the music of Timbuktu, and Sonrhai music?

K.A.:  Absolutely. They are ready to understand. They've already understood. Because as soon as a musician sings, and the public responds, even if they don't understand Sonrhai, they don't understand Moor, they don't understand Tuareg, they don't understand Arabic, but as soon as I sang, they repeated everything after me. And they danced.  And they didn't want the concert to end. Truly, I found that the American public is ready to understand all the music that comes their way. That's a great thing for us. It's wonderful. We're really happy.

B.E.:  Wow. Congratulations. That's nice to hear.  We will be with you in Brooklyn tonight.  [Read Banning Eyre’s review of that concert.]  Before we talk about your new CD, Timbuktu Tarab, it's been seven years since we met. What's been going on in Timbuktu during those seven years?

K.A.:  Everything is going well. When you left in 2003, things were good.  Today, things are even better, even better than a 2003. Timbuktu is truly far away, but she is good.  Timbuktu is so good, we might say it's even closer than New York and Washington.  Timbuktu is a cosmopolitan town.  There are all the cultures in Timbuktu.  We are at peace. We are good. Timbuktu is ready to receive all of the world. Since 2003, since 2001, the festival has not stopped, right up to today. We held the 2010 festival, and we are in the process of preparing Festival in the Desert 2011, and we are ready to see people from the entire world.

B.E.:  In sh’Allah.

K.A.:  In sh’Allah.

B.E.:  Over the years, we have talked to a lot of American musicians who've gone to the Festival. Most recently, there was the New York band Sway Machinery, who I know worked with you. So tell us how the festival has grown over these years.

K.A.:  The festival has really grown since you were there. There are so many musicians who come there, and they look for other musicians, musicians from Timbuktu to work with them. Thanks to these exchanges and the hospitality of the people, the festival has really grown. It was big, and now it's even bigger.

B.E.:  It is a great exchange. And I think there's a special connection between American musicians and the musicians of that region. We've always had a special feeling for Ali Farka Toure, Tinariwen.  And then we had the chance to discover the music of Khaira Arby!  Why do you think American musicians and musicians from the north of Mali are able to relate to each other so easily?

K.A.:  That just shows that the music of the North is cosmopolitan.  The music of Timbuktu is so big; it can receive any other kind of music—all kinds of music.  When Sway Machinery arrived, they came to me and said, “Khaira, we're going to play something and we want you to join in.”  When they started playing at the festival, and everyone was there, I thought, “What am I going to sing what this music?"  But when I sang, everyone was... "Wow!”  So then they came to see me in Bamako and they invited me to come and record on their album. Everything went well. I'm not sure if you've heard their album.  [Watch Khaira Arby and Sway Machinery at the 2010 Festival in the Desert on YouTube.]

B.E.:  No. Not yet.

K.A.:  It's really good.  I sang with them, and they also accompanied me on a song, that is the title song of my CD, “Tarab.”  And really that went very well. One could say that they are musicians of the north now.

B.E.:  I remember that song “Tarab.”  There's a little clip of you singing it in the film we made of the festival in the desert in 2003.

K.A.:  Yes.

B.E.:  Let's talk about your new album a little bit.  What's the story of this new CD?

K.A.:  This CD.  It goes back to you and your brother Sean [Barlow].  You discovered he liked me. You liked me the first time you heard me in Timbuktu. In the same way, I was at a festival in Bamako. I sang, and there was a French man who came and said, "Me, I would like to work with you."  I said, “You are welcome.”  He found me at my home, the place where I stay in Bamako, the next day. He said, "I came to the festival. I am a producer. I recorded musicians. I listened to you yesterday. It was magnificent. I must work with you." I said, "No problem."  So we left it like that. He went back to France. I went back to Timbuktu. Afterwards, he came and found me in Timbuktu. He made a video of a song from my previous CD, Rasool.  We made a video in Timbuktu. He went back to France and put it on the Internet where a lot of people saw it.  He said it was well-received, and that I must come and record an album then. And this is how he came to Bamako. And I came with my musicians, and we recorded in Bamako.  And then the tour.  But it was he who chose the name Timbuktu Tarab.

B.E.:  What it his name?

K.A.:  Boris Persikoff.  We had to have a CD for this tour. I couldn't come to the United States without bringing an album in my hand. So I brought this CD. There is another album too, Rasool.  Hopefully in time you will find this album too.

B.E.:  Hopefully!  But this new album, Timbuktu Tarab, was it recorded at Studio Bogolon?

K.A.:  Bogolon, yes.

B.E.:  Good studio. And what does that title mean, Tarab?

K.A.:  Tarab means “my land.”  The land of Timbuktu.  My land!  It is beautiful, the land of Timbuktu, it is mysterious.  It has everything.  Among us, when we eat, we eat the food of Timbuktu.  This is why we call the CD the land of Timbuktu.

B.E.:  Let's talk about some of the songs on the CD. The sound is fantastic. Really great music. Tell us about the first song “Goumou.”

K.A.:  “Goumou.”  SINGS.  “Goumou” talks about prayer. When one is Muslim, when one is Catholic, when one is Jewish, one must pray, each one prays to his God. And we, we pray to God, and the Prophet, who is between us and God. It's a religious song.

B.E.:  Beautiful. And you have other songs here that talk about your Muslim faith.  I remember discussions in 2003 about certain Muslim authorities trying to discourage people from playing music. Is that still going on?

K.A.:  No, no, no. Thanks to God, thanks to our message, we artists, all that is over now.  Among us, before...  I think I spoke to you about this in 2003, that people were saying women were not allowed to sing, especially women who are not griots. 

B.E.:  Yes, we spoke about that.

K.A.:  But thank God, where we are now, all the young women want to become musicians. I can say that I had a role in that.  So that people could understand that women can become musicians.  You can be a Muslim and a musician.  It doesn't hurt anything.

B.E.:  You are the model.

K.A.:  Thank you.

B.E.:  Let's talk about the song “Djaba.”

K.A.:  “Djaba.”  That is an authentic song of Timbuktu.  You know that in Timbuktu, all the ethnic groups have their own music.  “Djaba” is for the black Tuaregs.  When they leave the fields, after a good harvest, the women and the youth and the men, in order to show that the harvest was good, they sing, “Djaba.”  For the men who are so strong, for the youth who are so modern, for the women who are so elegant.  This is what they say in “Djaba.”

B.E.:  You spoke about all the ethnic groups in Timbuktu. That song comes from the Black Tuareg.  For folks who don't know much about this region, tell us about the different groups of Timbuktu.

K.A.:  In Timbuktu, there are the black Tuareg, there are the white Tuareg.  There the white Arabs, there are the black Arabs. There are the Sonrhai.  There are the Peul.  There are the fishermen. There are the masons. There are the minors, and those who go to seek salt in Taoudeni.  There is all of that in Timbuktu. This is why in my music, all the ethnic groups of Timbuktu find themselves. They all find themselves in my music, and I sing to them one by one.

B.E.:  This is why you say it's a cosmopolitan town, right?

K.A.:  Yes. It's a cosmopolitan town. Multicultural!

B.E.:  That’s sure.  I remember this, because when I lived in Bamako, there was hardly anybody who spoke English there. But then I went all the way to the north to Timbuktu, and found little boys who spoke very good English.

K.A.:  Thank you.  That's because in Timbuktu, it is a city open to the world, and when a stranger arrives, everybody wants to approach this stranger. Everyone wants to say, "that is my stranger." It is not because they want to get something. It's to learn from them, and to teach them what we have in Timbuktu.

B.E.:  It's true. That's the charm of the place.  What about this song “Tijani”?

K.A.:  “Tijani.”  Me, I am an artist. I am not a griotte.  I sing in all the languages.  I have wanted to come to the United States for many years.  I have dreamed of that.  I could not come here alone.  That's an example I can give you.  But thanks to Chris [Nolan] and my manager Mahamoud [Arawani], I have come here.  They brought me so that I would become known.  They gave me something.  Now, I must compensate them.  I don't have money to give them.  I don't have gold to give them.  I have nothing but my voice.  A simple thank you hurts nothing, and it gives a lot.  So this is thanks that I give to someone who has always helped me.  That's what “Tijani” is, thanks to someone who has helped me in my life, and who is always with me.  If I'm there, he is there with me.  So this is me thinking him on this CD.

B.E.:  Fantastic.  And “Waidio.”  This is a really powerful song.

K.A.:  “Waidio.”  I like this question. This is good. I was hoping you would ask this question.  “Waidio” talks about women, before our time.  Before, among us, there were no women who sang.  There were no women who went to work.  Among 10 women, you found that there were only one or two who went to school.  Women were closed off.  Women were left to the side.  So I sang “Waidio” because of that.  So “Waidio” talks about women.  I ask women to wake up, to go to school, to look for work, to try to be everything they can be.  There are thousand officials in the town, and there's not even one woman among them.  I'm telling women they must wake up.  You go out and vote for men.  Why not vote for ourselves, women?  Everything is based in the diplomas of men.  We have to look for other diplomas.  Our own diplomas.  If we have our diplomas and they have their diplomas, then men will talk to women.  But that will not prevent us from respecting men.  That’s “Waidio.”

B.E.:  I remember in 2003, you told us how you had been married, and it has some problems with your husband about your singing career and that caused you to get divorced so you could keep on singing.  Is it different now?

K.A.:  It is very different now, very very different.  I felt really abandoned.  I was so tired of this thing.  “A woman must be married.  You must get married.  Women must remain seated.”  I said no.  Me, I'm going to play music. And I'm going to make people listen to my voice everywhere, and educate women, encourage them to do what they want.  And thank God, where I am today I have succeeded. They're are married women who play music.  They go out.  I am married.  Right now, I am married, but I go out as I please.  I make my tours.  I come home.  I respect my husband, and he respects me.

B.E.:  Is he a musician?

K.A.:  He is not a musician.

B.E.:  But he understands you.

K.A.:  He understands.  He understands me.  And I can say that thanks to me, today in Timbuktu, many husbands have understood.

B.E.:  That's great.  Congratulations.

K.A.:  Really, I feel very happy about this message that I have put out. Men have really listened well.

B.E.:  That's a very big thing, really something to be prouid of.  Let me ask you about the song “Delia,” a Tamaschek song.

K.A.:  “Delia.”  That’s for the young people.  There was a young person who was a dancer, a great dancer.  In the night, in the moonlight, if he tapped his feet on the earth, and he cried out, the girls came to dance. He fell sick. And when he fell sick, his friends came to visit.  When these friends came to visit, instead of talking about his sickness, he would talk about the place of the dance.  “Have you been to the place where we meet to dance?” His friends would say, "You are sick.”  He said, "No, even if I die, this thing must continue.  The one thing I ask of you is that this dance continue in the same place, at the same hour. This is the only thing I ask of you."  After he died, his friends sang, "Delia, Delia is dead, and he told us not to leave the place of the dance where we used to meet every time." So this is a song that had disappeared. But when I sang it, all of Timbuktu remembered this. The old people were, “Ahhhhhh!”

B.E.:  So it is an old song.

K.A.:  Old.  Old.  Old.  Very old.  I saw old people who called me and said, "How did you learn this song? How did you know about this song?  We ourselves who are older than you, we have already forgotten the song."  That's research.  That's music.  Actually it was another old person who had come to teach me the song.

B.E.:  You have a song about a very tough subject here.  That's “Fereine.”

K.A.:  Oh, “Fereine.”  “Fereine.”  SINGS A LINE.  This song also talks about women. About the violence done to women.  Violence done against women is what?  Excision.  You know what that is?

B.E.:  Yes.  [Excision is female circumcision, or more correctly female genital mutilation.]

K.A.:  It is forbidden. Among us in Timbuktu, that does not exist.

B.E.:  Really.  Since when?

K.A.:  Before, before, before, Timbuktu tried this one time, more than a century ago.  They gathered 1000 young women.  They took them to the side of the river, 7 km from the town of Timbuktu.  They took them there and circumcised them.  Excision.  All of these thousand women died.  Only one survived.  After that Timbuktu forbid this practice.  Since that time, there is no excision in Timbuktu.  But you see that in some other areas, in some other regions, in Mali, this has existed.  And this bothers us, we the women of Timbuktu.  So this is why I sing “Fereine.”  This song says, "Let me go.  I don't want to be part of an excision.  Let me go."  They ask, "Why do you want to go?"  We say, "Because we, the women of Timbuktu, we don't want even one woman to be excised.  It is not good.  It brings sickness.  It can even prevent a woman from having children.  It can create crises that we don't even know where they come from.  No medicine can treat it.  And it diminishes women."  So like all Africans, like all Malians, I sang this song to sensitize the people who do this.  To make them stop.

B.E.:  I remember a few years ago an American woman who made a CD with Malian singers about this subject.  And I remember that the great griotte Kandia Kouyate had sung a song for this CD.  When I interviewed her, she spoke about the moment when she sang the song, and various religious authorities came to her and said she should not be singing about that, and she argued with them.  She stood up for her right to sing about this.  So do you think ideas have been changing about this subject?

K.A.:  Even in Mali right now, everywhere people are talking about this.  It is changing.  Even religion talks about it, that it must stop.  The past is the past.  But this must not continue.

B.E.:  Because it does not come from religion.

K.A.:  That does not come from religion.  No.  No.  Not all.  It's a culture... there are some people for whom this is their culture.  But it's not religion, and it's not good. Everyone is in the process of struggling against this now in Mali.  That I can tell you.

B.E.:  Everywhere in the world, we have the situation where traditions are in danger of being lost.  But there are some traditions that are important hold onto, and others that you have to let go of.  That's the challenge, isn't it?

K.A.:  There are things that we must not keep because they are not good.  There are things we keep, but excision we cannot keep.  What has been done has been done.  The past is the past.  But where we are today, this must stop.

B.E.:  There is one more song I want to ask you about, and that's “Youba.”

K.A.:  “Youba.”  “Youba” I sang for my brother.  I had a brother who was a hero.  A hero.  Very brave.  He had no enemies.  He had no rivals.  That is to say everyone was the same for him.  He was the mayor of Timbuktu.  He left Timbuktu to go to a meeting in Bamako.  He found me in Bamako.  He said, "Khaira, aren’t you going to the biennalle?”  The biennale was in Kayes.  I said, "I have a wedding in Bamako, for the son of Tijani,”  The same Tijani [I sang about].  After the wedding, I want to go to  Kayes.  He said, “Khaira, I don't want the opening of the biennale to happen without you at the front of the troupe from Timbuktu."  He said, “I will be at a meeting, and after that meeting, I will join you."  I said, "Okay. I will go."  We parted on Saturday.  Sunday.  On Monday, I went to Kayes.  On Tuesday morning, someone called to tell me that he had died.

B.E.:  How?

K.A.:  He was dead.  There was nothing more.  I came.  The same day, I returned by plane to Timbuktu.  All the regions of Mali, the eight regions of Mali, were represented in Timbuktu for his burial, and everyone spoke well of him.  Everyone said of him things that we had never seen and never heard about him.  It was so good, it was so beautiful, that I took those words, and I composed a song and dedicated it to him.

B.E.:  What was his name?

K.A.:  Said Mahmoud.  Among us, your children that you love well, your father that you love well, your uncle that you love well, you cannot call them by their name. You say “Youba.” 

B.E.:  Youba.

K.A.:  “Youba” means “father of the nation.”

B.E.:  Was he old?

K.A.:  He was not old as such. When he died, he was only 56 years old.  He had only friends.  If you were 12 years old, you were his friend.  If you were 80 years old, you were his friend.  He was good with everyone. Everyone.  So this is a song that I dedicate to him.  I spent more than a year, each time I would rehearse this song I would cry. Finally, the musicians said, "Let's leave this song.  We won't do it anymore."

B.E.:  Too much emotion.

K.A.:  Too much emotion.  The first day I sang the song at a concert in Timbuktu, I regretted sinnging it.  Because I did it... A concert is 12 songs, but I sang this as the fifth song.  The hall emptied.  Everyone went away to cry.  I regretted having sung it.  So I have dedicated this song to “Youba.”

B.E.:  Is that why you made it the last song in your CD?

K.A.:  [LAUGHS.]  So that people can listen really well.

B.E.:  And then they can cry.

K.A.:  Voila.  Thank you.  Thank you.

B.E.:  Well, thank you.  This is a great CD, a great introduction for Americans to your music.

K.A.:  It hasn't yet come out in Mali.  But everyone is waiting for it.  He [points to her manager Mahmoud] stole a little bit and played it for people, and people came to me and said, "But we heard some of it with Mahmoud.”  I said, “No.  He stole it.”  LAUGHS

B.E.:  Khaira, before we hear some music, do you have a message for Americans, for Afro pop listeners and viewers?

K.A.:  I have a message for Americans. I love Americans. Thanks to Americans who came and saw me in Timbuktu, starting with you and Sean, and Chris, and the group with whom I played [Sway Machinery], I am in America because of these people. I am in America because Americans love my cousin Ali Farka Toure.  And I love America because I have come to America.  I have seen.  I've been here for two nights.  I've done just two concerts, but I've seen how Americans welcome me.  And I invite everyone. I invite everyone to come and discover the music of the North, of Timbuktu, of our home, through my voice.  And I think it will be a big surprise for them.  And I'm going to sing a song for the United States.  I want to sing a song that's called "America," for the United States, a song that no one has heard yet.

B.E.:  Wow. That's great. Thank you.  So now, what are you going to perform in this little session for Afropop?

K.A.:  Well, for Afropop, my young group is here.  It's they who decide what we do.  I'm here with a group of young people. We could say that we are all the same family.  We all come together at my house.  We reharse at my house.  We eat together.  Those who are married go home to their wives.  Those who are not stay with my family.  It's a young group, and we are one family.  I know that when you saw me in 2003, it was different.  It was with other musicians.  Eballaou [Yatara, the ngoni player] was there.  Inna [Diarra, backup singer] was there.  But the others were not there.  Adramane Toure, the youngest member of the group, when we met, his father was the guitar soloist in the group.

B.E.:  Male?

K.A.:  No, not Male.  Bastos. 

B.E.:  Bastos.  That’s his father?

K.A.:  Yes.  He is the son of Bastos.