Nahawa Doumbia (born ca. 1961 [1] ) is a singer from Mali's Wassoulou region. [1]
A lot of women sing love songs, but I'm a fighter. I fight for children's education and for marriage--particularly for monogamy. Good relationships are very important. You have to work in order to succeed.
Nahawa Doumbia, to Chris Nickson, 2000 [2]
Doumbia, in a career that lasted for over four decades, was an important musician in the development and definition of Wassoulou music, the popular music from her area of Southern Mali, [3] which in turn had a great influence on Mali's musical culture. [4] Doumbia was born into a caste of blacksmiths and so wouldn't have been allowed to sing, but broke that taboo. Her career got started after she won a contest on the French-language radio station Radio France Internationale. [5] Scholar Lucy O'Brien mentioned her as one of the women who created a music that gave voice to female expression, and praised her "high-tech poetry and metaphor" in a study of women in popular music. [6]
Her debut album, La Grande Cantatrice Malienne Vol 1, was recorded with N’Gou Bagayoko, who played acoustic guitar and who later became her husband. After her first recording, as a duo, she moved toward playing with larger groups that incorporated synthesizers and electric guitar. La Grande Cantatrice was released on AS Records, a record label from Côte d’Ivoire. It was rereleased in 2019 by Awesome Tapes From Africa. [3]
In 2021, Awesome Tapes released a new album, Kanawa ("Don't Go"). The album contains material about Mali's problems--"terrorist attacks by the West African offshoot of ISIS, continued French military intervention, widespread strikes and protests and a coup d’etat". The title track urges the young people of Mali to stay in the country, lest they fall victim to human trafficking. The album was recorded in Bamako, in Salif Keita's studio. Instrumentation included the traditional ngoni and a modern version thereof, and the kamale ngoni, besides guitar. According to reviewer Eugene Ulman, "The arrangements, building from mostly acoustic to bass-heavy grooves, are sparse and deliberate: every detail, down to the smallest karignan (metal scraper) and the gunshot samples (incorporated into the percussion palette) are placed with meticulous care." [1]
She wrote a song in honor of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary who became the President of Burkina Faso. [7]
Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern, the blues scale, and specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes, usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove.
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Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was a Burkinabè military officer, Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist who served as President of Burkina Faso from his coup in 1983 to his assassination in 1987. He is viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of the revolution.
The balafon is a gourd-resonated xylophone, a type of struck idiophone. It is closely associated with the neighbouring Mandé, Senoufo and Gur peoples of West Africa, particularly the Guinean branch of the Mandinka ethnic group, but is now found across West Africa from Guinea to Mali. Its common name, balafon, is likely a European coinage combining its Mandinka name ߓߟߊ bala with the word ߝߐ߲ fôn 'to speak' or the Greek root phono.
The music of Mali is, like that of most African nations, ethnically diverse, but one influence predominates: that of the ancient Mali Empire of the Mandinka. Mande people make up around 50% of Mali's population; other ethnic groups include the Fula (17%), Gur-speakers 12%, Songhai people (6%), Tuareg and Moors (10%).
Oumou Sangaré is a Grammy Award-winning Malian Wassoulou musician of Fulani or Fula descent. She is often referred to as "The Songbird of Wassoulou". Wassoulou is a historical region south of the Niger River, where the music descends from age-old traditional song, often accompanied by a calabash.
Wassoulou is a genre of West African popular music named for the Wassoulou cultural area.
Kandia Kouyaté is a Malian jelimuso and kora player; she has earned the prestigious title of ngara, and is sometimes called La dangereuse and La grande vedette malienne. Kouyaté's dense, emotional, hypnotic manner of singing and her lyrical talents have earned huge acclaim in Mali, though she remained relatively little known outside Africa, due to extremely limited availability of her recordings. Her home town of Kita is known for love songs, which form a large part of Kouyaté's repertoire. She also sings praise songs.
Rokia Traoré is a Malian-born singer, songwriter and guitarist.
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The ngoni is a string instrument and a traditional West African guitar. Its body is made of wood or calabash with dried animal skin head stretched over it. The ngoni, which can produce fast melodies, appears to be closely related to the akonting and the xalam. This is called a jeli ngoni as it is played by griots at celebrations and special occasions in traditional songs called fasas in Mandingo. Another larger type, believed to have originated among the donso is called the donso ngoni. This is still largely reserved for ceremonial purposes. The donso ngoni, or "hunter's harp," has six strings. It is often accompanies singing along with the karagnan, a serrated metal tube scraped with a metal stick. The donso ngoni was mentioned by Richard Jobson in the 1620s, describing it as the most commonly used instrument in the Gambia. He described it as an instrument with a great gourd for a belly at the bottom of a long neck with six strings.
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