Author: Diabate, Kasse Mady

Release Date: 04-03-2003

Details: Amazon.ca Though this Malian griot has a career stretching back to the early 70s, he's not nearly as well known as his musical pedigree would lead you to expect. Kassi Kasse is his first solo work since the patchy but intriguing brace of albums he recorded with producer Ibrahim Sylla in Paris in 1989 and 1990. But you're more likely to know his voice from guest appearances on the Songhai 2 album or Taj Mahal's Kulanjan. The musician linking those two albums with this latest effort is mercurial kora maestro Toumani Diabate, who furnishes just one track with his rippling accompaniment. The arrangements are almost exclusively traditional (n'goni, balafon, dundún, djembe etc), but the material traces both the musical heritage of his home village of Kela (where it was recorded in a disused infirmary) and Kasse Mady's own career. That's why a couple of rather charming Cuban flavoured numbers from his days in the '70's and '80's with the orchestra Las Maravillas du Mali are included. There are also two strange songs featuring the little-heard "simbi" (an ancient seven stringed hunter's harp), which add much needed variety to what might otherwise have been little more than a glorified field recording. Kasse Mady has a great voice and he's joined on four songs by his brother Lafia, who will be familiar to owners of Djelimady Tounkara's solo album Sigui. And though it lacks the polish of that record, it does have that loose organic feel which only comes from musicians interacting live in the studio. --Jon Lusk

UPC: 724354371325

EAN: 0724354371325

Binding: Audio CD

Item Condition: New