Artist description ELECTRO BAMAKO biography Béni soit qui Mali pense On the face of it they don't have much in common. He: Marc Minelli, bottle-fed with a rough, chunky sound and pop music, half-way between the Beatles and the Talking Heads. She: Assitan Mamani Keita, decorously brought up in the bambara tradition sung to her by her grandmother, her horizon - as that of her colleague Oumou Sangaré - being the emancipation of women. He: born in Paris and living in Le Havre, connected to alternative networks and punk energy, his sights set on the US of A. She: born in Bamako, though no 'griotte', quickly making a name for herself with Salif Keita who bundled her off to Paris. He: the creator of several discs and those eternal hopes that - one day - he will have to make good, moving on to text-based songs, like a big boy now. She: a cassette to her credit, making ever more remarkable appearances, with Sory Bamba, Hank Jones and Sheikh Tidiane Seck, while still doing her own thing. At first sight one gets the idea that (both of them hitting a cool forty) they reflect different realities, black v. white - the cliches of earlier days. The ear, naturally, is more refined, can work out the differences, play on the subtleties. There's but a step from monochrome to monotone - a trap into which neither have any great wish to fall. They prefer to build bridges, develop connections with tomorrow. If you look more closely, Assitan Mamani Keita and Marc Minelli, over the past twenty years, have always gone beyond the old bromides of those who, if you're African, think you have to have such and such an image, and if you're a singer, that you must make sure you stay one. No! Everyone follows their own path, so long as you don't get caught in a dead-end. On the face of it, they weren't supposed to meet. "I really didn't know much about electronic music," says Mamani. "I knew nothing - or almost nothing - of African music, and had never been to Bamako," replies Marc. But there we are, flesh and blood have not yet been computerised. That is why they have joined forces for this idea of "music without frontiers", the only one being the framework for what they wanted to do. Both went their separate ways to see if they were really taken by the idea, and both came together again as never before, and for always. They travelled with their own know-how and preconceptions, and above all with the desire to discover the other, no doubt so as to get to know their own selves better. They had to learn to listen to each other. "We have different ways of counting in music, of playing with the beat. Mamani's support is the snare drum while I sing to the bass drum. We had to come to an arrangement." And then, on to the music! He played some samples "taking care to respect the text, the original meaning, and being especially careful not to let the machines betray the subject matter." She produced a series of ten songs, with her high-pitched voice and the felicitous guitar of her faithful Djelly Moussa. He wanted to "shorten as much as possible, to sculpt the acoustic material", without ever losing the thread of the voice, punctuating it with the rhythms of his sequences, rubbing it up against the samples. In the end, after three years of cutting and pasting, of to-ing and fro-ing, the encounter of the third type came about, fed on fantasy and confrontation, sensual but never consensual. At first sight "Electro Bamako" is world music! Of course, the reality is just the opposite. Today, music is a world opened out onto infinity, a world that goes beyond the narrow framework of prejudice. "Lets stop thinking of West African music as folklore." Their music is written in the subjective plural, because it combines two singular paths of the present tense. She does not seek to misrepresent the forceful relevance of these ideas; he does not try to efface the stylistic differences; they speak coherently with one voice. "This music has its source in Mamani, who wrote the songs, and afterwards it travels through the sounds I've collected from all over the planet." This is no neo-colonialism of some obsolete past, just retro-futurism, clinging to reality. At this instant, the overall atmosphere conveys the sound of the great city as much as it does the sounds of the earth. 'World sound' the slogan of the eighties, travels even better with the technical progress made since then. This disk consists of "Malian songs mixed with electro jazz on pop structures but with a rock sound". The clear timbre of the voice is transported to other horizons, carried by a tempestuous flow of sound. Bop drive, a finely laid-out piano line, an explosive saxophone sample, a synchronised n'goni loop, a few sensitive strings (violin/cello), a balafon to give the beat, a 'technoid' carpet: in the multitrack play-off there are as many false starts as real surprises on arrival. Like a jungle quivering with noises and resonating echoes like fragmented solos... Salvation comes to the sincere of ear! As it turned out, Marc Minelli left his home-studio for Bamako. Well and truly, for good. It was there he tested the fruits of this by no means unnatural union. "I listened to the montage with Amadou and Mariam. It fitted in well with the overall atmosphere." As it turned out, Mamani also was all ears. "At first I didn't recognise myself. Until I heard my voice. I liked it!" As it turned out, this sound object built a bridge between two worlds, between two personalities who in the end are very like each other. A man and a woman who have roots that go deep, who have the light wings of desire. Their feet are fixed in their soil, their heads turned towards more distant, uncertain horizons. You can hear it. These people listen to each other. For you to listen to them, you just have to get rid of the insolent veil of outward trickery, all these a prioris that fix on the colour of someone's skin, the fiction of passports that music makes light of for our greater pleasure. Translated by Jeremy Drake

Artist History

Location Bamako, Africa - Mali

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