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Artist: Habib Koité
Category: Africa
Habib Koité is one of a new generation of Malian musicians to find fame abroad in the late 1990s. In the previous decade artists like Oumou Sangare and Ali Farka Toure put West Africa's most musical nation on the world music map. They represented the distinctive regional styles of Wassoulou and Songhai/Tuareg music respectively, seldom straying from the traditions they had been raised in.
Koite took a different approach. Keenly aware of the rich diversity of styles his country has to offer - and helped in no small part by the ground work of those artists in familiarising international audiences with them - he made his music into a kind of Malian travelogue.
He sings in all of the country's five main languages and writes songs using the scales, song structures and other conventions of virtually every different local style. A particular favourite is the 'danssa' rhythm from his native city of Kayes. He also uses his acoustic guitar to mimic folk instruments like the kora and the kamalengoni (Wassoulou 'youth's harp'), as well as using riffs and techniques gleaned from Western popular and even classical music.
The 43-year-old has always been a musical chameleon. He says he learnt how to play just by watching his griot parents. While studying a four-year course of classical music in Bamako, he would gig by night on the city's club scene, playing everything from heavy rock to euro-pop, with plenty of jazz, blues and other African styles in between.
He formed his group Bamada in 1988 and they won the Radio France International 'Prix Découverte' which facilitated a tour of Europe in 1994 and the recording of their first album Muso Ko.
This year saw the release of their third album Baro. It features the wonderful balafon (wooden xylophone) of Kélétigui Diabaté as well as the song 'Cigarette Abana' which warns of the dangers of tobacco and was a hit in many parts of West Africa ten years ago. The man may not like cigarettes but his career is certainly smoking.
Biography by Jon Lusk, November 2001
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