DESCRIPTION:
Performance - 6 July 2013
Mali is in the spotlight at the moment, due to it's troubled situation. One of the natives of Mali, Bassekou Kouyaté, raised his voice in protest at the radical muslims on his album Jama Ko. Bassekou and the members of his band, play (amongst other things), four ngonis, the traditional harp lutes. Each ngoni is tuned differently, from bass to high, the ngoni being the oldest version of the modern banjo. Bassekou's music is rhythmically and melodically ingeniously put together with breaks, contra rhythms and unexpected melodic turns. In the 1980's the ngoni had been relegated to the background music and almost ceased to be used as a solo instrument. Bassekou and his band Ngoni Ba, by forming the first band of ngonis in history, returned the ngoni to the foreground. He played many festivals and concerts around the world to an often rapturous audience and received many eschrijving