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Toumani (left) at the Camden Centre with Ousmane Sacko (right).
lso a first for him was his London meeting with Amadou ‘Bansang’ Jobarteh. “My uncle came from Seattle, he was giving kora lessons at the university there. He had accompanied Lucy to Bamako to meet Ousmane Sacko when I was in Gabon. The first time I saw him was here.” They played Glastonbury together, but for Toumani of even greater significance was yet another first, the moment he performed with his father, the revered kora master Sidiki Diabaté.
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He appeared with his father’s group, the Sidiki Diabaté Ensem- ble, at the Royal Festival Hall’s Music Of The Royal Courts season and Bracknell Folk Festival in the summer of 1987. “It was exciting. Usually I didn’t play with my father, we were on different levels.”
This lends a resonance to Toumani’s recent appearance at the Barbican with his son Sidiki. Diabaté junior is the latest in a long line of hereditary musicians. Kora players all, Toumani says the Diabaté line can be traced back 72 generations. You might think that family music lessons are a given but Toumani did not receive direct music tuition from his father, and nor does Sidiki receive any from his. They learn through watching and listening. He says: “It’s like a schooling for me, playing with my father. When I play with him I learn a lot. The kora has a history and there are techniques you have to learn and that’s what I do when I play with my father.”
“You don’t teach,” says Toumani. “No one is perfect, you always need to learn you are in the middle. Some people are more than you and you are more than other people. It’s not that I’m the father and he is the son, we are playing together. And when you play together it’s always an exchange. You give and you learn. I learn from Sidiki.”
“It’s a blessing to play with Sidiki,” says Toumani. “Everyone wishes that their son can be more than them. Thank God, Sidiki has a gift from God, very great divine inspiration.”
Surely their family history testifies to the argument that musi- cal talent is genetic?
“It’s from God,” Toumani explains: “The human genes are all
from God, it’s just divine inspiration translated from person to per- son. We believe in God,” he adds, though I’d assumed as much as our interview took place slightly later than advertised so that father and son could observe their prayers. Theirs is not an assumed religious mantle. I get the impression that their beliefs are profoundly integrated with their being. Both come across as calm and centred, balanced with equal amounts of humility and self-respect.
“Music,” Sidiki responds, “is what I’ve got in me. It’s some- thing that is my joy, my sadness, it represents everything for me, life. I play what I feel in my heart, that’s very important. When I feel sadness I play the kora and it brings me happiness. I don’t see music as a chore or a job, it’s like my first love. Everything else comes after that except God and his prophets.”
At home in Bamako, Sidiki fills 20,000-seater stadiums as one
half of Mali’s most popular hip-hop outfit with rapper Iba One. He listens to everything he can: “Electro, techno, reggae, everything. It’s very important to listen well. You have to have an understand- ing of every genre to play your own music.” It feeds him, he says. And Toumani offers the familiar litany of modern parents: “In Mali, the young people are using computers, the internet, they’re very intelligent with new technology. I don’t know how many times he charges his phone, if he’s not praying or playing or sleep- ing, he’s on the phone! It means music travels fast now.”
And what about the impact of travelling on music? His first recording released in the UK was on the album Ba Togoma (Rogue) by the Sidiki Diabaté Ensemble, featuring the aforemen-
Photo: Ian Anderson
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