A Native of Thiero, in the region of Faranah in the Guinean Highlands, Sékou Diabaté is a self-taught musician trained in the tradition since childhood.  He soon took a passion for the guitar, forging a characteristic, unique and inimitable style inspired by the kora and balafon – the king instruments of Mandingo music – as well as all the music styles he heard on the radio.  Like all the young people of his generation he was tuned in to Cuban music, jazz, blues and chanson froncaise, there from developing his own personal synthesis, in the service of a very strong musical identity.  As of the start – at the time of independences – he has been the solo and central hub of a band that has revolutionized West African urban music: the Bembeya Jazz, founded in 1961, which became Guinea’s leading band at the time of Sekou Toure, the country’s first president, both a despot and patron for the new republic.  The band has owed its success, reputation and influence on all African bands to its singers (among who the late Aboubacar Demba Camara and Sékouba Bambino, who now continues a solo career) and, above all, to the flamboyant lyrical solos of its guitarist – nicknamed “Diamond Fingers” following a memorable Bembeya Jazz performance at the Lagos Fespac (first Pan-African arts festival) in 1977. 

As talent as he is modest, Sékou Diabaté has seldom recorded in his own name.  He has taken the opportunity of a sojourn in France, in-between the Bembeya’s latest European dates and their US and Canada tour, to make this album featuring some Bembeya musicians as well as singer Safiata Condé, very popular in Conakry and West Africa, who appears on two songs.