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Sample Track 1:
"Neba Kadi" from Neba Ka Di
Sample Track 2:
"Donso Solo" from Neba Ka Di
Layer 2
Bio

More about Neba Solo

Since 1995, Neba Solo has been in the front ranks of Mali's musical scene. With his innovative and virtuosic bala style and thought-provoking compositions, he has become something like the Charlie Parker and Charles Mingus of the Senufo bala (wooden xylophone). Just as everyone imitated Bird after his emergence on the bebop scene of the 1940s, so every young bala player longs to play like Neba Solo. Like Charles Mingus he is a gifted composer who teaches his band parts by demonstrating them aurally. There are many imitators but only one Neba Solo.

Neba Solo’s compositions comment on contemporary Malian social issues such as vaccination, AIDS, female excision, protecting the environment, political corruption, and the role of tradition in modern life. He, indeed, has become known not only as an excellent musician, but as a thoughtful artist, with much wisdom to share with his fellow Malians. His compositions frequently begin with a medium-tempo song that then goes through several changes in tempo, which highlight the danceability of the music. His live performances feature two extraordinary professional dancers (Bocary and Ibrahim Dembele) who delight and amaze the audience with their grace and skill. It is Neba Solo’s combination of virtuosity and creative song-writing and composition that have truly amazed his contemporaries.

Balafon is actually the French word for instrument that is known as bala in Bamanankan (Bambara) and cekiw in Senufo. It is a wooden xylophone with calabash resonators, and comes in various sizes. Wooden xylophones, with various names, tunings, and number of keys are found throughout the African continent, and each cultural tradition has personalized the instrument in its own way.

Neba Solo has earned much acclaim and many awards. In 1995 he won the first prize in the balafon competition at the Dundunba Top festival held in Koutiala, Mali. Since then he has become a major star in Mali, and widely known in France. The overwhelming success of his recording Can 2002 led to his being named a Knight of the National Order of Mali (Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mali) in 2002. He has several other albums, including Kenedougou Foly (1998), Kene Balafons (2000), and a collaboration with an Iranian Trio Chemirani entilted Falak (2002). In 2003 he made his first trip to the U.S. for the Smithsonian Folk Festival, where he dazzled the crowds in Washington, D.C. In 2005 he was a Blodgett Distinguished Artist in Residence at Harvard Universtiy, and in 2007 was invited by the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall to appear as part of their Global Encounters Program. In the summer of 2007 he served as a special instructor for a Summer School Course in Mali sponsored by Harvard University.

Neba Solo (b. 1969), whose given name is Souleymane Traoré was raised in the village of Neba which is twenty-five miles northeast of Sikasso, Mali's second largest city, which is in the Southeastern corner of the country. His father was a master bala artist who very early on recognized his son's extraordinary talent. As child he learned all instruments in the traditional Senufo ensemble including the bara drums (small and large), the tchatchara, the karinyan, and the ceikiw (bala). As a teenager he and his older brother Ousmane had a group that played for all sort of celebrations, festivals, dances, naming ceremonies, funerals, weddings, and other social events at villages throughout the Kenedougou region (southeastern Mali). Souleymane's reputation quickly spread by word of mouth and soon people were asking each other whether they had heard the Solo (short for Souleymane) from Neba. Soon everyone was calling him Neba Solo.

When he was eighteen years old Solo heard Alpha Blondy's reggae recording of Jersualem. He was particularly enchanted by the bass line and decided to try building a bala with added bass notes. His father and other Senufo were at first skeptical of the changes he was proposed to make in the instrument. Before he could continue developing his ideas he had to ask his father's permission. They came to an agreement: his father gave him a certain period of time in which to make a recording based on his new ideas. If his father liked the result, he would grant him his permission to continue his musical direction. Solo went into the countryside to gather wood to begin building his new bala. He added three bass notes to the traditional 17 keys and also experimented with various tunings. First and foremost, he wanted to expand the role of the bass line in his music. He ultimately took a traditional Senufo tune that everyone knew and created his own version of it with expanded bass line and new tuning. He played it for Senufo audiences and recorded it for his father. Everyone agreed that the new version of the tune was an improvement and his father, at the end of 1987, granted him permission to pursue his new musical direction.

Throughout the next several years Neba Solo developed a new sound for the bala ensemble. Instead of three, bala-one for bass, one for treble, and one for accompaniment-Solo used two bala. The accompaniment parts were distributed between the treble and bass instruments. His brother Siaka, who plays the treble bala, plays and improvises tremble melodies with his right hand while playing accompaniment parts with the left hand. Solo plays and improvises bass lines with his left hand and plays accompaniment parts with his right hand. Neba Solo also began distinguishing himself as a composer, by writing many, many songs on topics of social interest in Mali-vaccination, female excision, corruption, environmental issues, and the like. He began to be known, not only as an excellent musician, but as a thoughtful artist, with much wisdom to share with his fellow Malians.

by Ingrid Monson

Quincy Jones Professor of African American Music

Harvard University