root salad f18 Amadou Diagne
His new album Yakarwas a bolt from the blue, a bona fide West African classic. “Howzat?” asks Steve Hunt.
sounded weird to me, at first, but I now think nothing of it! What I love about playing with Amadou is that he’s inter- nalised every kind of rhythm from his training as a drummer in Orchestre National du Senegal and applied that knowledge to his songwriting and guitar playing” – a highly rhythmic style which includes bursts of quick-fire body slapping and tapping.
“A Griselda Sanderson & Amadou Diagne I
first encountered Amadou Diagne in a Bath folk club, of all places, where he performed a mesmerising solo floor spot before the booked act and
effortlessly stole the show. A quietly- spoken, likeable singer, songwriter, guitar player and percussionist from a large griot family of sabar drummers and praise singers, his career had already included working with the likes of Youssou N’Dour, Cesaria Evora and Jimmy Cliff before the release of his debut album Introducing Amadou Diagne in 2012.
While that was a very good record, his
latest release Yakar, recorded in collabora- tion with Waulk Elektrik’s Griselda Sander- son is, as our editor stated in the notes to last issue’s fRoots 45 compilation, “startling- ly good,” and, to quote Jamie Renton’s review in fR361 “plaintive, acoustic and brimming with an unhurried assurance.”
I met up with Amadou and Griselda for a cup of tea and a chat in the latter’s home in Devon, and asked Amadou how their musical alliance came about.
“Griselda was working with [ritti mae- stro] Juldeh Camara as Julaba Kunda and they wanted a drummer, so Juldeh called me. That’s how we met, and I just contin-
ued working with Gris after that.” “That was last February,” says Griselda. “At about the time that the project with Juldeh was coming to an end, I heard Amadou sing and went ‘woah!’ We started recording just for fun, really. Amadou had just written Help A Child [a song about the importance of education, the video for which became something of a hit on Sene- galese and Malian TV] and I had all the equipment set up, so he recorded it here. After he left, I added some string parts and it just developed from there.”
Amadou concurs. “We recorded the whole album here, in Gris’ cottage. Some songs I already had written, some I just made here, improvised the music and made the songs. Working with Gris is very easy – we just play and find ideas very quickly and make things. I like working this way!”
Gris smiles ruefully at the suggestion that it was all so easy. “It was more diffi- cult for me! Although I’d already played West African music with Juldeh, his Fulani style is quite different from Amadou’s music. I found it very hard at first to adapt to the unfamiliar modes – Amadou will play quite happily in Locrian mode, which most western musicians never use. It
“I take techniques from the talking drum,” he explains, “and apply them to the guitar. Many people play the guitar to make it sound like a piano, but I try to make it something different. When I was 16 years old, living in France, I met Salif Keita, who taught me all about acoustic, traditional music. I especially like the blues, too. I always try to incorporate the blues in my own music.”
madou’s guitar lines sound simple,” muses Griselda, “but there’s always something else going on
rhythmically, behind them. It really helps me to just listen to Amadou playing with his friends – to hear how the kora occupies the space within the rhythm, and then apply those kind of melodic runs to the violin. It’s really fascinating – in our British folk melodies we tend to start ‘at the bottom’ and go up, but the African ones start at the top and go down…”
I interrupt Gris’ musical reverie with a prosaic query about forthcoming gigs.
“We’re booked to appear live on the national TV channel in Senegal in Jan- uary,” offers Amadou, clearly relishing the prospect, “and to play some shows at the Jazz Café in Dakar. Baaba Maal plays there sometimes, it’s a really nice place!”
“We did a rural tour in the Spring,” says Griselda, “which was supported by the PRS for Music Foundation, and that was fantastic – always full houses, and a real range of people, from young children to the elderly. We’re in the process of putting a touring band together, but getting UK gigs is very difficult. I think if we were based in London, maybe we’d be noticed a bit more by the world music scene.”
While the duo have already captured the hearts of festival audiences in Corn- wall – they’ve played both the Cornwall Folk Festival in Wadebridge and the Golowan Festival in Penzance, to huge responses – the rest of the UK folk circuit has, thus far, yet to catch-up with the wild west. Guitar and fiddle duos from the West Country seem to be popular enough nationally, so let’s hope to see this one at a few more festivals next year.
www.amadoudiagne.com F
Photo: Neil Cooper
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84