27 f Queen & King Of Strings
It’s a pairing of two virtuoso players from ancient harp traditions – Catrin Finch from Wales and Seckou Keita from Senegal. Andy Morgan digs into harp history and many stringed chemistry. Photos: Judith Burrows.
O
ld rivers and new lands. Fishing line and pumpkins. Fish and chips. Our story is about strange pairings that cut across elemental frontiers; about
places, lives and legends that mirror each other in curious, even startling ways; about the unexpected symmetry that belies the chaos of human variety.
It was a breezy Monday morning in late March of 2012 and the world’s great- est kora player, Toumani Diabaté, had just spent the night sleeping on the couch in the suite of a prestigious hotel in Cardiff. He could have slept in the hotel bed of course, but he became absorbed in the music of Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita and Welsh harpist Catrin Finch tinkl - ing through his headphones, and ended up dozing off on the couch.
There was a certain urgency in the act of listening to that music. Toumani Diabaté was due to start a five date sold-out tour with Catrin Finch that same evening; just the two of them, on stage with their instru- ments. But with only hours to go before showtime, Toumani had yet to set eyes on her. In lieu of more conventional prepara- tions, he had spent the night listening to a rehearsal for the tour which he hadn’t been able to attend. Instead, his place had been taken graciously and capably by Seck- ou Keita. “This is beautiful,” Toumani declared when he was eventually shaken from his slumbers on the couch, “I love it.”
Toumani had arrived at Heathrow air- port at midnight the night before and travelled to Cardiff where he was greeted by the mightily relieved figure of friend and tour co-producer John Hollis. “Ah!… Dolphin John!” he exclaimed, in reference to an idea that Hollis had once proposed to Toumani back in the late 1980s. Much had changed since then, but John’s reunion with Toumani had a certain circu- larity about it, like dolphins returning to some fondly-remembered patch of water in a vast ocean.
John and Toumani had become friends and fellow-travellers back in the late 1980s when Toumani was virtually unknown outside Mali and West Africa, like the kora, the instrument he played. The pair spent a couple of years touring the world together, hanging out, swap- ping sounds – dub, reggae, Bristol mash- ups – sharing interminable flights and bus rides, shooting the breeze, dreaming dreams. John even sent Toumani a few cas- settes of Celtic harp music and Toumani had even tried playing with a classical
harpist from Holland. It was just one hybrid idea amongst many. John also tour- managed Amadou Bansang Jobarteh, Toumani’s gentle and inspiringly humble kora-playing grand-uncle, the guardian of Toumani’s father Sidiki Diabaté, yet anoth- er kora legend. It felt like a family affair and John’s memories of the period are warm and golden.
In the end, Toumani struck off to become the Grammy-award winning Franz Liszt of the West African kora and John drifted into the family of Toto La Mom- posina, the Colombian singer whom he managed for years and whose daughter he married. But John always pined for those Manding melodies of West Africa. “That whole African experience felt like something very familiar, very comfort- able,” he remembers. “Like I’d already been there in a previous life or something. I missed it a lot.”
Twenty years later, the harp and kora idea returned like the echo of a past life or an insistent genie that refused to take no for an answer. Strangely, both John Hollis and his co-producer Dilwyn Davies from the Theatr Mwldan in Cardigan had been nursing the same vision of an Afro-Celtic wedding of strings. Having already master minded several successful encoun- ters between Catrin Finch and the Colom- bian group Cimarron, who play a hot-rod version of the harp-heavy joropo music of the Los Llanos plains of eastern Colombia, the idea of a West African harp connection seemed both logical and strangely pre- destined. Both John and Dilwyn knew that if it was to be done at all, it had to be with the best of the best; with musicians who were so fluid and confident with their own instrument that they would have no fear in coupling it with a distant relative from another world.
The harp slot was a no-brainer. Catrin Finch had already given rock solid account of her exquisite virtuosity and fearlessness to the entire classical music establishment, Prince Charles and even more importantly, to John and Dilwyn themselves. As for the kora, well, there was only one possible option there too. “Toumani… it has to be!” thought John, despite the fact that his old friend was now in the champions’ league and busy fielding constant offers from around the world, most of which he was in the habit of turning down. Calls were made to agents and managers, and, to the complete and utter amazement of most people concerned except perhaps John himself, Toumani agreed without a
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