Malian musician Toumani Diabaté and his 21-string kora, pictured at WOMAD, the UK’s annual global festival of music, arts and dance. Diabaté died on 19 July at the age of 58.
Judith Burrows/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
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Judith Burrows/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
“He played those 21 strings with love.”
This is the great American banjo player Bela Fleck talking about his duets with Toumani Diabaté from Mali, including the much-loved “Dueling Banjos.”
Fleck called him “one of the best accompanists I’ve ever played with.”
It is one of many heartfelt tributes to Diabaté, who died of kidney failure on July 1. Diabaté was 58.
His death had repercussions around the world, with many musicians expressing how deeply his life had affected them.
“Toumani was a guardian of our culture, but also a bold innovator who never stopped pushing the boundaries of his art,” Malian singer Oumou Sangaré wrote on her Instagram page. “His departure leaves a huge void in our hearts, but his musical legacy will continue to resonate with us and inspire generations to come.”
Like father and mother….
Toumani Diabaté was born into a family of griot musicians who preserved through their music the stories and traditions of Mali’s Mandé empire, once the largest in West Africa. His father, Sidiki Diabaté, was the leading kora player in the years following Mali’s independence in 1960, and his mother, Nene Koita, was an accomplished singer.
Diabaté, who had always been expected to carry on his family’s long-standing musical legacy, taught himself to play his father’s instrument.
His technique was clearly showcased in his innovative solo albums, Kaira (1988) and The Mandé Variations (2008). On Kaira — released shortly after he turned 21 — his graceful shifts between melody and bass always made it seem as if he was singing as much as he was playing.
Diabaté also created a larger project called Symmetric Orchestra. This large ensemble brought together instruments and repertoire from across the former Mandé empire with added textures and punch from American and European strings and brass. Diabaté included original compositions as well as new adaptations of griot songs.
As Diabaté wrote in the liner notes of the orchestra’s 2006 album, Independence Boulevard“One of the philosophies of Symmetric is the meeting of generations. The old generation has its experience of music, the new generation has its madness of music.”
Diabaté’s enthusiasm for improvisation and sharing kora music around the world has led to several fruitful collaborations. He has recorded with legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré and another great kora player, Ballake Sissoko. Diabaté has also worked with artists whose backgrounds were different from his own. These collaborations have included jazz and blues musicians, Spanish flamenco groups and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Taj Mahal: ‘It was as if 500 years of separation no longer existed’
Through his music, he made his own heritage known while helping to show how that culture was part of a common language. Blues guitarist Taj Mahal and Diabaté teamed up for the 1999 album Kulanjan Featuring a small group of Malian musicians, the album offers a rich blend of American folk and acoustic blues and Malian musical styles. Mahal’s raspy voice creates a compelling contrast with the higher registers of the Malian instrumentalists and singers. Despite their seemingly different styles, Mahal found a mutual musical understanding in their collaboration.
“It was never like, ‘You play this, I’ll play that.’ We just played together, looked at each other and it was done. Just like that. It was like 500 years of separation didn’t exist anymore,” Mahal said.
Béla Fleck collaborated with Diabaté for a series of concerts in 2009. Some of these performances are included on their album, The ripple effectreleased in 2020. A sense of joy shines through in their rapidly changing tempos and shared sense of humor, evident in moments like Diabaté’s playful musical response to Fleck’s “Oh, Susannah” excerpt on the track “Kauonding Sissoko.”
“Toumani was incredibly kind from the beginning. He always called me ‘brother,’ which made me feel very privileged,” Fleck said. “Toumani had elegance. That’s what I think of, and that incredible touch that he has.”
“A great artist who belongs to the world”
Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor was one of Diabaté’s most recent collaborators, with their duet album, The sky is the same color everywherereleased last year. Their collaboration began with an invitation to perform together at the Morgenland festival in Osnabrük, Germany, where they met a few hours before their first concert. The album was recorded after a brief European tour, but their musical interaction suggested a much longer partnership.
“We come from two different cultures that view music in the same way. Improvisation is one of the major aspects of that. The other aspect is that our musical cultures go back a long way,” Kalhor explains. “When you are so deeply rooted in the culture and you know the music of that culture very well, you have the freedom and the vision to contribute to it. So it’s not surprising that a musician of Toumani’s caliber and stature would bring something to the music that the younger generation is using.”
Kalhor added that even though Diabaté is part of Mandinka culture, his music ultimately touches everyone.
“Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Akira Kurosawa and Abbas Kiarostami are great artists who belong to the world,” Kalhor said. “So I don’t see Toumani as a kora player from Mali, I see him as a great artist who belongs to the world.”
Aaron Cohen is the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power (University of Chicago Press) and amazing Grace (Bloomsbury). He teaches humanities and English composition at the City Colleges of Chicago and writes regularly on the arts for publications such as Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader And The pace is slowing down.
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