20 albums in 20 Days Kaira by Toumani Diabate

I've been nominated to post 20 album covers in 20 days to Facebook. But I've been a little distracted lately. The 20 album covers represent music that has had a significant impact on my life. No explanations or commentaries are expected on Facebook. However, in these difficult times, writing something about these albums seems a fun thing to do. A suitable distraction. And this blog seems a suitable place to write a comment or two about them.

If you hover your cursor over the artists named here, you'll find links to the songs on YouTube.

Friends came to visit me when I was a patient at Northwick Park Hospital. It was a long time ago. They bought this record with them. I loved Kaira from the start. I've been playing it since then. Probably 1979 or 80. This album was my introduction to what became, World Music. There was something so hypnotic in this music. At first, it carried me away, out of that hospital bed to another land. But later at home, the album became part of my summer music. I remember playing it driving through Richmond Park in glorious sunlight. I remember the sun shining through trees. Branches, blown by soft and warm southerly breezes. I remember driving south through France, on a family holiday, our car windows open, and the heat and the music flooding in. 

Years later I enjoyed the collaboration between Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure in the album In the Heart of the Moon. It's a fantastic album.

I'd first heard the music of Ali Farka Toure through listening to Ali Farka Toure's collaboration with Ry Cooder in the album Talking Timbuktu. Click here for a link to a post that refers to that discovery.  

The whole album Talking Timbuktu is fabulous but scroll down to 21:45 to hear an amazing blues duel between Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate. 

Here's a link to a performance of Savane, the title song from the album of the same name. Ali Farka Toure plays live with a band. There's so much pleasure and joy in this performance.

Quite separately from this album, but now interested in the music of Mali, I'd begun to buy compilation CDs as a way of discovering other music from Mali. Somehow I stumbled across the World Music Network and their Rough Guides of World Music series. I bought an album. African Blues and discovered two names that still captivate me. 

Firstly there's Oumou Sangare. I listened to the album again and again. And her song and her voice, right at the end of the CD just knocked me out. The song Saa Magni comes in layers. At first, a fiddle then hard plucked guitar strings or is it a Cora? It introduces a melody and sets up the rhythm. And then a chorus of women's voices. All of this lays there waiting for that extraordinary moment when her voice breaks through and seems to change the world. Forever. Here are two recordings. Click here for the recording I heard on that CD. Heard it for years before I took proper notice of her and bought an album of hers. Click here to watch Oumou Sangare perform the song live. It comes in at 8:30. But really the two songs are stunning.

Secondly, Boubacar Traore. His voice on this song is completely mesmerizing. Click here to hear this extraordinary voice. A voice of the desert. Gouged from sun and sand. Lost to the wind. Bursts into the air with no one listening. Yet hangs there. Waiting. Hope. It captivated me for years before I decided to track it down and discovered him and bought a couple albums.