47 f The Griot Antidote
Suffering from griot fatigue. All kora’d out? Never fear, salvation is at hand in the shape of Diabel Cissokho. And he’s here in the UK too. Jamie Renton gets all ethusiastic again.
D
iabel Cissokho’s debut album has cured me of a creeping case of griot fatigue. I’ve been listening to the music of the hereditary musicians of West Africa since the 1980s and (like many) have always had a particular soft spot for the sound of the 21-stringed kora harp. But a slew of West African releases from last year, whilst all being perfectly serviceable, somehow left me cold. Many of these featured kora players. Could it be that I was growing tired of this timeless sound? Fortunately help was at hand. One listen to Kanabory Siyama (World Village), the first release from Senegalese singer and kora player Cissokho, sorted me out from the very first note. Here was an album to reaffirm my faith by simply delivering the real thing very, very well.
On paper, it’s pretty much like many other such releases, there are no great innovations, just the versatile Mr Cissokho (he features on n’goni, guitar and percus- sion, as well as kora) playing and singing beautifully, surrounded by a band of like- minded musicians from Senegal and else- where, delivering up some lovely melodies, imaginatively arranged. It’s nei- ther a too-eager-to-please ‘fusion’ project, nor a dry-as-dust ethno recording, but rather the sound of a group of people doing what they love and doing it pretty much to perfection.
I first encountered Cissokho perform- ing with Brit blues guitarist Ramon Goose. Their 2010 album Mansana Blues (Dixie frog) was rightly well received round these parts and Goose crops up on three of Kanabory Siyama’s tracks. Then I heard him guesting with underrated UK jazz-meets-world saxman Kevin Hayne’s Grupo Elegua. But nothing prepared me for the full-strength power of Cissokho’s own sound.
So it’s a warm spring evening and I’m strolling through the bustle of Liverpool Street Station on my way to the calm of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace & Reconcili- ation. Originally a church, it was all but destroyed by an IRA bomb back in the 1980s and rebuilt some years later as a multi-faith meeting place for discussion and cultural celebration. Promoter Wallee McDonnell has been putting on excellent world music nights for some years now in what is one of my favourite London venues. When I arrive, Diabel and his band are sound checking, going through the full range of what they do, from delicate solo kora to crunchy full band desert blues.
Once the sound has been well and truly checked, Diabel and I retire to The Tent, a quiet space specifically designed for peo- ple of different backgrounds to come together and meet as equals (as good a place as any to interview a Senegalese griot I reckon).
“My family is a griot family, called the Cissokho family,” Diabel tells me in surprisingly good English, once we’ve
slipped off our shoes and taken ourselves into The Tent. The Cissokhos are about as renowned as griot families get (kind of like the Corleones in the Mafia, or the Carthys in English folk circles). “We live in Tambacounda, which is 456 kilometres from the capital.” This is south Senegal, close to the border with Mali, from where Diabel’s dad hails. Cissokho Senior worked in the capital Dakar, playing with
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