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"Khaira" from Timbuktu Tarab
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"Djaba" from Timbuktu Tarab
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Interview

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Seattle Times, Interview >>

Malian singer Khaira Arby makes Seattle debut

Malian singer Khaira Arby was forbidden from singing as a young woman because she wasn't born into an official griot (praise singing) caste, so she taught other young women to sing. When one of her protégés was in turn forbidden from singing, Arby stepped in, and her career began. She performs Sunday March 13 at the Crocodile in Seattle.

By Andrew Gilbert

Concert preview

Khaira Arby and The Sway Machinery

8 p.m. Sunday, the Crocodile, 2200 Second Ave., Seattle; $15 (206-297-2666 or http://thecrocodile.com).

Khaira Arby hails from a village near Timbuktu in the desert of northern Mali, but she owes her late-blooming career to a story straight from the annals of Broadway.

Despite being related to the late guitar legend Ali Farka Touré, Arby had to overcome a series of huge obstacles to pursue her love of singing, including opposition from her family and culture because she wasn't born into a griot caste. (Griots are official praise singers, historians and storytellers: Think Homer, in ancient Greece.) She makes her Seattle debut Sunday at the Crocodile with Brooklyn's Sway Machinery.

"My father forbade me to sing," says Arby, speaking in French through an interpreter. "I was very young, and I got married and had some children. I was held back for eight or 10 years. I don't regret it. I have my children, and finally my father understood it was my destiny."

It was another father's decision to keep his daughter offstage that led to Arby's big break. A major feature of Timbuktu's cultural life involves vocal competitions between neighborhoods. Forbidden from performing, Arby spent years teaching other women in Timbuktu her incantatory style, which mixes traditional praise singing and sinewy Berber "desert blues."

A week before the competition, one of Arby's protégés suddenly found herself grounded.

"Her father forbade her to sing," said Arby. "The whole week before I was looking for someone to replace her. On the night of the concert I did the solo and it went well, and here we are today."

Last year Arby released "Timbuktu Tarab" (Clermont Music), her first album with North American distribution. She also connected with several Western musicians through Mali's storied Festival in the Desert, including Sway Machinery, featured on her new album, "The House of Friendly Ghosts, Volume 1" (JDub Records).

Something of a Gotham supergroup, Sway Machinery is a horn-driven collective that brings together members of Balkan Beat Box, Arcade Fire and Antibalas. Steeped in Afrobeat, jazz and rock, the group coalesced around a passion for Jewish cantorial music.

"She's one of the great vocal artists living," says Sway Machinery guitarist Jeremiah Lockwood. "She'd never sung with a Western band before, and she jumped in and sang beautiful parts, just a great improviser taking on the material."

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