Malian Mood Masters

Boubacar Traore and the late Ali Farka Toure – together in this video playing Malian acoustic guitar blues. Pentatonic scale, desert moods, blackness, the limitless power of the sun. The Bambara language finds expression amidst the riffs and chords, finger licks, the audible gifts. It is good to be Afrikan – to share in a heritage that ranges from the blues to djembe to Afro-beat to soukous and everything in between. This is “Duma Ma Yelema” by Boubacar Traore.

Blues informs hip-hop in a very clear fashion. Listen to Robert Johnson’s track “They’re Red Hot” and you witness that early talking blues spitting. Talking blues are an under-studied science – and by studying talking blues one comes to understand that hip-hop is much older than DJ Kool Herc.

And blues itself emerges from griots singing, in the telling of tales like that of Sundiata by our relatives in the old Mali, Songhai and Ghana empires. Blues tells our stories, plain and simple. It tells our pains and our triumphs. Thus much homage is due to the blues. And the blues must be claimed by Afrikans as something key in our cultural space, and as a historical creation of the global black experience.

Malian masters tell stories again now, in their native tongues, on the salt flats of the Sahel. We must listen well. We can learn a great deal from the rhythm alone, let alone the mood created in the riffs, licks, and language of the desert blues.

Long live Ali Farka Toure.

Talking blues! Talk Blue! Talking blues! Grotto news! Black man sues! My lady died last Tues! Mad Uncle Haqq wants to stalk some Jews! Aunt Manna talks just like she coos! Cuckoos late on paying dues! Pay your dues to the Talking Blues!

Wisdom to the Child

“Issa” Clip de Dobet Gnahoré�
Uploaded by Contre-Jour

This song, “Issa,” is from the 2007 album Na Afriki by Dobet Gnahoré, from Côte d’Ivoire. I do not know Malinke, the language this song is sung in, though I certainly wish I did. Perhaps I will learn that language one day. Meanwhile, I found the imagery in this video so striking that I was moved to comment on it. Those who have the liner notes to this album, or who know malinke, feel free to correct my interpretations.

It seems that the child is approached both lovingly and anxiously by Dobet and the other woman in this video. I assume the boy’s name is Issa. He is the focal point of affection and what I perceive to be wisdom-teaching from the mother(s). Yet his future – particularly as a young Afrikan – will surely be uncertain. Will he even heed the advice of his elders? Is he even listening to them in the first place?

The Afrikan woman loves her child so. But here, the mother and her sister/ friend shake their heads in quiet dread. They want the best for him, but the world is not the best. And it will not be up to them to get Issa to want the best of and for himself.

What does this mean? One generation can’t easily prevent the suffering of the next, despite their best wishes. It will take more than one mother imparting wisdom onto one child for the next generation to make more progress, on a human scale, for a more beneficent existence in their lives.

Generations of Afrikans being born today and recently have been offered a worse world, and worse prospects and opportunities, by the preceding generations, so they won’t rise easily. Fathers and mothers have to be wiser, so young ones are more confident in themselves. The mass of doubt the elders share between themselves, outside the presence of Issa, won’t do the boy any good. Issa must know that trouble is everywhere, and not be shielded or sheltered from the suffering of the world and of his own peers, nor from the fact that all that suffering is in part due to the actions of his parents’ generation. Issa didn’t ask to be born, so tell him all the truth. That way he will be a stronger Afrikan and will know what the precedents of current conditions are so as to affect means to create conditions which promise a better future today and tomorrow.

To the young black Afrikan youth all over the world! Take heed and get smart!