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he lyrics of Sinanon Saran are about leaving youth
T
and true love behind, a familiar theme in wedding
songs as marriages would be arranged and the bride
often had to leave her village and live miles away in
servitude to her husband’s family. In his role as a
griot, Kasse Mady would walk the long walk with the bride,
singing his lament until she met up with her waiting husband
and in-laws to be taken to her new life.
He no longer performs these ceremonies, preferring, he says, to
leave it to his children, whom he is “encouraging to play music and
to sing”. How many children has he got, I ask. He seems surprised by
the question, smiles and shrugs. “I don’t know, exactly, seven or
eight, maybe more.”
We meet the day after his brilliant performance to a packed-
out Barbican and are sitting in a nearby business-like hotel, drink-
ing coffee. He looks extremely dapper in a brown three-piece suit
and pork-pie hat, like a jazz musician from the golden age. He’s
smaller, neater than I expected. Last night on stage he was, like
the rest of his fabulous four-piece band (guitar, bass ngoni, cal-
abash, and Bassekou on ngoni), dressed in African robes. He
looked imposing and in total command.
I’m completely inadequate on the African language front,
with half-forgotten French that anyway lapses into Spanish, so
we’re having a conversation in French via an interpreter. Kasse’s
not comfortable as he finds it hard to express himself in French.
Later, talking to Lucy Duran who knows him well, she says that
actually he finds it hard to express himself generally except
through song. “He’s got all this stuff in his head. He can sing mov-
ingly about the whole history of Maninka culture going back 800
years, but he’s quite lost for words in an interview!” He is however
completely charming and tries really hard without getting the
slightest bit impatient. Kasse Mady, it quickly becomes clear, is an
extremely modest, hard-working and immensely humble man.
Live, his voice was a revelation once again: it simply reaches
into your soul and lifts it. And it is, says Mark Kidel, who made a
film about Malian musicians featuring Kasse Mady for the BBC,
even more impressive when it’s not miked-up. I’m keen to know
what it’s like for Kasse Mady to have this voice, what does it feel
like when he’s singing, making such a fantastic sound.
Kasse Mady laughs. He laughs and smiles a lot. He says that
though he’s been encouraged to sing since he was little, when he
hears others like Taj Mahal (with whom he performed on the
award-winning Kulanjan album), their voices mean so much to
him he thinks they are much better than his. But he explains that
when he’s singing he focuses on the audience. He recognises three
types of people, those who concentrate on his words and what
they mean, those who concentrate on his voice and those who
think about the range of his voice and what that can do. He con-
centrates on all those things and does the best job he can.
The conversation keeps coming back to that. Kasse Mady is
just doing his job and does it all the time, drawing inspiration for
his songs from everyday life. “I could write a song about what we
did here. I came to London, spent two or three days there, did an
interview… I could write a song about all that.” His album fea-
tures songs about daily life and love as well as traditional epic
tales and those for specific ceremonies. His music is he says “un
mélange de la traditionnelle et du moderne”. He composes his
own songs and arranges “les vieux, vieux, vieux chansons”. The
musicians play what he asks them to and once he’s made an
album, he never listens to it. “Once they’re done, they’re done.”
He does though listen to a wide range of music. “I listen to a
lot – including Cuban music, jazz, rap, because all those musicians
respect the range of music that exists. It’s true!”
Whilst he might not listen to his albums, he’s made a few. He
lived for over six years in Paris, having to exist on handouts despite
making two acclaimed albums with Ibrahim Sylla, Fode and
Koulandjan Kela. It was a grim time for him says Lucy Duran, he was
“ripped off left right and centre” and became diabetic, a condition
that remained undiagnosed for some time. Back in Bamako he
made more recordings. Mande Music From Mali was made for the
small Mexican label Discos Corazon. They licensed it to EMI’s Hemi-
sphere world music imprint which then failed to pay not just for
that licensing but any subsequent royalties. Re-released on Narada
in 2003 as Kassi Kasse, the album was nominated that year for a
Grammy. And now there’s his latest masterpiece Manden Djeli Kan.
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