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with another Mandé word meaning ‘blood’. Blood lines, the blood of sacrifice, the flow of great rivers, the flow of life blood red… who knows?
That first kora, built by spirits, had 22 strings but when Jali Mady Wuleng died, one was taken away to mark his passing. Since then, most koras have always had 21 strings.
The jali’s roles in life are multiple: musician, oral archivist, genealogist, diplo- mat, emissary, match-maker, instrument- maker, blacksmith, poet, advisor, spokesperson, flatterer and repository of all traditional knowledge. He’s the Swiss Army knife of African bards. Simply put, his duty is to serve great men; kings, war- riors, chieftains, clan heads, local digni- taries, wealthy businessmen, patriarchs, matriarchs, prime ministers and presidents. His powers of memory are crucial. John Hollis talks about Toumani Diabaté as hav- ing “a griot’s memory,” in other words one that can recall small but significant details that most of us burn off in the flitting frenzy of our daily lives.
The true jali needs the kind of memo- ry that can reel off 50 generations and end with the following: “Jali Bambou Koumady Cissokho begat Jali Bamba Ba (‘Bamba The Great’) begat Jali ‘Boutata’ (‘Big Belly Button’) Cissokho begat Jali Falaye Cissokho who begat Jali Sambou Cissokho who begat Jali Kemo Ba Cissokho who begat Jali Mady Cissokho who begat Jali Kemo Cissokho who married Bintou ‘Ando’ Konte, who also came from a long line of griots. Jali Kemo and Bintou Konte’s eldest daughter was Fatou Bintou Cissokho and she married a man who came from afar, drawn by a mysterious compul-
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sion to the Casamance region of southern Senegal. His name was Elhaji Mamadou ‘Soumah’ Keita. They had only one son and his name was Seckou Keita, who was born in 1978.
eckou Keita grew up in Ziguin- chor, the capital of Casamance, a strip of land split from the rest of Senegal by the long snaky ex- British colony of The Gambia. His father Mohammed disappeared soon after he was born and his grandfather Jali Kemo, a strict and exacting man, became his guardian and teacher. At the age of seven Seckou started learning how to build koras out of a large uneatable pumpkin called a calabash, a trunk of rosewood or teak, a covering of cow hide and strings made from fishing line. He also had to ‘test’ play them. A kora must be played endlessly by young child apprentices before its sound ‘matures’ properly. At the age of 14 he was allowed to master the basic repertoire, especially the cycle of songs about an old Manding warrior hero called Kelefa Saane, which are considered to be the ABC of any aspir- ing kora player. At the age of 21, accord- ing to his grandfather’s strict code of jali / kora education, he was free to go out into the world and practice his art.
The truth is that by the time he reached the age of a ‘full set of strings’, Seckou Keita had already chosen his own path and rebelled against the strictures imposed on him by Jali Kemo and other family elders. He had become expert on various local drums – seourouba, sabar, djembé – and used to skive off school to jam endlessly and perform with local Zigu- inchor bands, before returning in the wee wee hours only to have his grandfather
wake him at 5am for morning prayers at the mosque next door. At the age of 17, he accompanied his uncle, the hugely suc- cessful and popular kora player Solo Cis- sokho, on a visit to Norway and then, a year later, to India.
Seckou Keita became, like most of his contemporaries in the Cissokho clan, a West African equivalent of Jules Verne’s character Jean Passepartout, in other words, a well-travelled self-reliant sur- vivor whose only weapons were wit, charm, self-belief and, in the Cissokho’s case, music. Seckou eventually married and settled in the UK from where he toured the world with Womad and vari- ous bands, guested and collaborated with artists as varied as Baka Beyond, Peter Badejo and his ‘family’ band Jalikunda, set up the first kora course at SOAS and taught endless drum and kora workshops to hundreds of eager students. In other words, using his jali skills, his passion and innate ability to fit in, he not only got by, but thrived in cold and foreign climes.
Seckou comes across as a man who knows that if you choose to live like a fish out of water, you must be affable, amenable, generally game and ready at all times to charm your hosts. The same is no doubt true of many of the members of his clan. Google ‘Kora’ and ‘Cissokho’ and you will come across a modern epic of roving African bards, living in cold corners of Europe on wits and music. Some are famous. Some less so. Some belong to other Cissokho clans. But all carry an essential faith in their culture and jali upbringing with them. And their instrument, the kora, seems divinely suited to intertwine with other musical worlds. Its sweet intricacy is the key to its flexibility and broad reach.
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