root salad f28 Kadialy Kouyate
Jamie Renton on a griot who’s happy to apply his traditional skills to collaborative projects.
man Toumani Diabaté and free jazz trom- bonist Roswell Rudd, and as a long-stand- ing member of Sheffield-based global music group Rafiki Jazz. He’s also collabo- rated separately with two South American harpists, Paraguayan Kiki Pederson and Leonard Jacome from Venezuela, with Adriano Adewale’s Afro-Brazilian jazz pro- ject, Indian multi-instrumentalist Baluji Shrivastav, and more recently with Baaba Maal and Mumford and Sons. He also found the time to complete a master’s in Musical Leadership at the Guildhall School of Music. A couple of years back Kadialy featured, as musician, actor and advisor, on the Africa-set sections of director Phillip Noyce’s remake of the TV series Roots. When we meet, he’s about to embark on a new collaboration with Nigerian pianist Niran Obasa, bringing together the Franco- phone and Anglophone traditions of West African music.
S L
ike many of the best musicians, certainly the ones I favour, Sene- galese kora player Kadialy Kouy- ate combines strong cultural roots
(in his case, the West African griot tradi- tion) with a willingness to mix it up with kindred musical spirits from all kinds of places. Originally from Casamance, in the south of Senegal, Kadialy has been resi- dent in the UK since 2005, where he’s well established as a musician and teacher, bringing his virtuoso playing and gentle voice to all kinds of projects.
Last year saw the release of Na Kitabo
(“My Book”), his second and most confi- dent-sounding album. Although it wasn’t supposed to be his next release. “I was already working with a producer, Jim Palmer, the son of Robert Palmer,” explains Kadialy, when we grab a few minutes to chat at a Euston Station café. He’s just back from working on a project with school chil- dren at Warwick Arts Centre and about to head straight off to East London to play at an evening organised by West African food and music event specialists Little Baobab. “But that was going slowly, slowly. Some- times you need an album to get gigs and all that stuff. So, I built a side project with these musicians, to give us something to work with while I was still working on the
other album.” Na Kitabo features the rhythm section of Mulele Matondo (bass) and drummer Giuliano Osella, both long- time members of Kadialy’s band. Guitarist Greg Sanders came on board via SOAS, where Kadialy teaches kora. All three are part of Sound Archive, the core of musicians who he works with and who feature on the two albums (the Jim Palmer-produced one being still very much in the pipeline).
Like all griots, Kadialy was born into a family who have been musicians for numer- ous generations and he started singing and playing at a young age. “When I was in pri- mary school, I used to sing and play the kora a lot with my older cousins, who are the younger brothers and sisters of Ballake Sis- soko,” he recalls. They toured locally and rep- resented their region in national competi- tions. Music was always his love, something he learnt from birth, but Kadialy studied English Literature at Dakar University. Finan- cially supporting his studies by gigging, he first visited the UK in 2003 and returned a couple of years later when he collaborated with steel pan player Fimber Bravo (as chron- icled in fR264). At the same time, he met Lucy Duran, who offered him the opportunity to teach at SOAS. “That’s how I accidentally ended up being here,” he chuckles.
From 2010 onwards, he started to devel- op his own Sound Archive band, whenever he could grab time between the collabora- tions and session work. “It is the idea of hav- ing an archive, where we can take the music from and a place where the different people that I work with can meet together.”
So, this is a man clearly unafraid to boldly go where no kora player has gone before and meet anyone he encounters in the process more than half way. “From the beginning of my career, since coming here, I’ve found that way of working very inter- esting. I suppose it’s just become natural at some point. Sometimes I have found myself in very uncomfortable situations, but they have become points of learning for me. It means I’m playing a traditional West African instrument, but having to learn all new scales, new approaches, new concepts of composing and making music.”
“If I was still in Senegal, the chances, for instance, of me working with a harpist from Paraguay are very minimal. And play- ing with a harpist from Paraguay opens up a new way of seeing music and experiencing different cultures. So, I’ve developed this curiosity, of trying to discover and find com- mon ground. But also, our environment influences us a lot. It’s very important to who we are. When you live in a multi-cul- tural city like London, not benefitting from all the amazing cultures that surround you would be such a waste!”
www.kadialykouyate.com F
ince then he’s cropped up all over the place, playing solo gigs, partici- pating in MaliCool, the collabora- tive project set up by fellow kora
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