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Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni ba

Posted: Sat, 28 Mar 2009

The 2008 BBC Radio 3 World Music Award winner plays at The Concert Hall on Tuesday 31 March.

After enormous critical acclaim for their debut album 'Segu Blue' (Out Here Records) and playing to enthusiastic crowds across Europe, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba, Mali's first ngoni quartet, will be touring the UK for the first time this March/April. Expect a brilliantly virtuosic, high-energy blend of venerable griot culture and contemporary influence, and find out why they have been called "the best Rock'n'Roll band in the world" (The Independent).

‘Segu Blue’ is the first solo album by Malian musician and composer Bassekou Kouyate, one of the true masters of the ngoni, a lute-like instrument from West Africa. Unlike the kora whose history goes back only a few hundred years, the ngoni has been the main instrument in griot storytelling since the 13th century, the days of Soundiata Keita, the founder of the Mali Empire.

Bassekou was born in the village of Garana, almost 40 miles from Segu, in the remote countryside on the banks of the Niger River. He was raised in a traditional musical environment, his mother a praise singer and his father and brothers exceptional ngoni players. Bassekou moved to Bamako when he was 19 years old where he met the young Toumani Diabate. By the late 1980s Bassekou was part of Toumani’s Symmetric trio (alongside Keletigui Diabate) and they recorded their first albums together, ‘Songhai’ and ‘Djelika’. Bassekou was involved in Toumani Diabate’s ‘Kulanjan’ project as well which also featured Taj Mahal. Moreover, Bassekou was one of the key musicians on Ali Farka Toure’s posthumous album ‘Savane’ and also toured with him. (As a tribute to the great man Bassekou recorded the track ‘Lament for Ali Farka’ for his album.) Bassekou has collaborated with many musicians outside of Mali, too, such as Ry Cooder and Bela Fleck and more recently Youssou N'Dour (on his album 'Rokku Mi Rokka') and Dee Dee Bridgewater (on her album 'Red Earth').

For ‘Segu Blue’, his debut solo album, Bassekou has put together Mali’s first ngoni quartet, Ngoni ba (meaning “the big ngoni”) which also includes Oumar Barou Kouyate, Moussa Bah and Andra Kouyate. His band also includes Alou Coulibaly (calebasse) and Moussa Sissoko (percussion) and his wife, the singer Amy Sacko (the so-called “Tina Turner of Mali”), as well as guest musicians Kasse Mady Diabate, Lobi Traore, Lassana Diabate and guest vocalists Zoumana Tereta and Ma Soumano. (Incidentally, there is no Kora or djembe on this album.) The album was produced by Lucy Durán, recorded at studio Bogolan in Bamako by Yves Wernert and mixed in London by Jerry Boys (the man responsible for recording and mixing ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ amongst others).

The repertoire Bassekou plays is Bambara music from the region of Segu. Bambara music is pentatonic in nature and as close to the blues as you can get in Africa. As legendary American blues artist Taj Mahal puts it “…Bassekou is a genius, a living proof that the blues comes from the region of Segu.” The songs on ‘Segu Blue’ tell the story of one of the last pre-colonial Malian empires: the Bambara empire of Segu founded by Bitòn Mamary Coulibaly in 1712. The CD’s 20-page booklet draws up a vivid picture of Malian social life before the colonial powers subdued the last local empires.

Released in the UK in the spring of 2007, the album won exceptional critical acclaim and ended up in numerous end-of-year lists such as the Observer Music Monthly's best 50 albums of 2007, Songlines magazine's 10 Best Albums of 2007 and The Guardian's 1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die, as well as being number 3 in the World Music Charts Europe 2008. At the BBC Radio 3 Awards For World Music 2008 it was declared the winner of the Album Of The Year Critics Award, as decided by an international panel of nearly 300 writers, broadcasters, musicians, activists and people in the business, and conducted by fRoots magazine. In addition Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba won the Best African Act category at the Awards and they were also nominated as Best Newcomer.

The band have been guests on radio and TV, such as a performance on Later with Jools Holland (BBC 2) in December 2007, and have performed several times in the UK, including at 2007’s WOMAD festival. They have established themselves as one of the most exciting live acts of the moment with their rocking, high energy performances.

Segu Blue is out now on CD (OH 007) and double vinyl (OPH 001 - Out Here Records/ UK distribution by Proper Music).