Malian musician Toumani Diabaté and his 21-string kora at WOMAD, the annual global music, arts and dance festival in the UK. Diabaté passed away on July 19 at the age of 58.
Judith Burrows/Getty Images/Hulton Archive Hide caption
Toggle caption Judith Burrows/Getty Images/Hulton Archive
“He played the 21 strings with love.”
Here, the great American banjo player Bela Fleck talks about his duets with Malian Toumani Diabaté, including the crowd-pleasing “Dueling Banjos.”
Fleck called him “one of the finest accompanists I’ve ever played with.”
It was one of many heartfelt tributes to Diabaté, who died in July from kidney failure. He was 58.
His death reverberated around the world, with many musicians speaking out about the profound impact his life had on them.
“Toumani was both a guardian of our culture and a bold innovator who never stopped pushing the boundaries of his craft,” Malian singer Oumou Sangare wrote on his Instagram page. “His passing leaves a huge hole in our hearts, but his musical legacy will continue to resonate within us and inspire generations to come.”
Like mom and dad…
Toumani Diabaté comes from a centuries-old family of griot musicians who have used music to keep alive the stories and traditions of Mali’s Mandé Kingdom, once the largest in West Africa. His father, Sidiki Diabaté, was a leading kora player in the years after Mali’s independence from France in 1960, and his mother, Nene Koita, was an accomplished singer.
Diabaté was always expected to carry on his family’s long-standing musical tradition and taught himself to play his father’s instruments.
His technique was on full display on his groundbreaking solo albums, Kaira (1988) and The Mandé Variations (2008). Released shortly after he turned 21, Kaira featured him gracefully switching between melody and bass, always sounding as if he was singing as he was playing.
Diabaté also created a larger project called the Symmetric Orchestra, a large ensemble that brings together instruments and repertoire from across the former Mande Empire, adding texture and power with American and European strings and horns. In addition to original compositions, Diabaté has composed new arrangements of griot songs.
“Part of the philosophy of ‘Symmetric’ is the meeting of generations: the older generation has the musical experience, the new generation has the musical enthusiasm,” Diabaté wrote in the liner notes to the orchestra’s 2006 album, “Boulevard De L’Independance.”
Diabaté’s passion for improvisation and spreading kora music around the world has led to a number of successful collaborations. He has recorded with legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure and another great kora player, Ballake Sissoko. Diabaté has also worked with artists from different backgrounds than 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 had vanished”
Through his music, he helped promote his own traditions while also proving that their cultures were part of a common language. Blues guitarist Taj Mahal and Diabaté teamed up with a small group of Malian musicians for the 1999 album Kulanjan, a rich fusion of American acoustic folk and blues with Malian musical styles. Mahal’s raspy voice provides a fascinating contrast to the higher registers of the Malian instrumentalists and singers. Despite their seemingly different styles, Mahal found a mutual understanding musically through their collaboration.
“It was never, ‘You play this and I’ll play that,’ we just played together, looked at each other and that was it. It was just like that. It was like the 500 years of separation had never happened,” Mahal said.
Bela Fleck collaborated with Diabaté on a series of concerts in 2009; some of the performances are included on the album, “The Ripple Effect,” released in 2020. There’s a joy in their fast-changing tempos and shared sense of humor, as exemplified by Diabaté’s playful musical response to a snippet of Fleck’s “Oh, Susannah” on the track “Kauonding Sissoko.”
“Toumani was incredibly kind from the beginning. He always called me ‘brother’ and I felt so blessed,” Fleck said. “Toumani had a grace about him, that’s what I think, and a great touch.”
“A great artist belonging to the world”
Iranian kamancheh player Kayhan Kalhor is one of Diabaté’s most recent collaborators, having released a duo album, “The Sky Is The Same Colour Everywhere,” last year. Their collaboration began with an invitation to play together at the Morgenland Festival in Osnabrück, Germany, where they met just hours before their first concert. The album was recorded after a short European tour, but their musical interplay suggested a much longer partnership.
“We come from two different cultures that see music in the same way. Improvisation is one of the main aspects. Another is that our musical culture goes back a long way,” Kalhol says. “When you go deep into a culture and you really know the music of that culture, you have the freedom and the vision to add something to it. So it’s not surprising that a musician of Toumani’s talent and stature would add something to the music used by the younger generation.”
Kalhol added that while Diabaté is part of the Mande culture, ultimately his music connects with everyone.
“Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami are great artists who belong to the world,” Kalhol said, “so I don’t see Toumani as a Malian kora player, but 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 University of Chicago and writes regularly about the arts for publications such as the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader, and Downbeat.
