Arts Alive visitor Salif Keita had to shrug off his noble ancestry to pursue his first love: music. He spoke to Bafana Khumalo
AFTER reading reams of interviews and profiles of Salif Keita in the American press, one could be forgiven for expecting him to be a 10-foot warrior god. In most of what has been written about this Malian musician, who is on the first leg of a pan- African tour touching places as diverse as Gaborone and Kenya, the recurring theme is that he comes from royal lineage, his ancestry going back to Soundiata Keita, founder of the Malian empire in 1240.
On meeting Keita, this noble warrior king heirloom is quickly discarded to a past that, indeed, was great — but is just that, a past.
“It is not my life,” says Keita as he sips coffee – – black with a slice of lemon — in a Johannesburg hotel lobby. “We have to move forward and not be caught up with the past.”
But, as much as he dismisses his portrayal as linked to a romantic African past, he accepts that some markets find it necessary to pigeonhole him in order to make sense of a musical form which might sound strange to a virgin ear. “My story is not a story of the past; it is a story of the present,” he says, speaking through a translator. “But I suppose that is how showbiz works in the United States.”
Born in Mali in 1949, Keita’s first love was music. But there was a problem: he was of noble birth, and custom dictated that musicians — griots — come from the lower classes.
Casting off these restraints, he left his home town of Djoliba at the age of 18, and found himself in Bamako, where he spent time busking and honing his skills as a singer. This learning experience lasted for the next three years, during which time Keita joined The Rail Band, a state-sponsored group which performed at the Bamako railway station hotel. At the end of his internship with The Rail Band, Keita joined Les Ambassadeurs. It was with this group that Keita developed his distinctive fusion of West African music and electronic Western influences. The band made several recordings.
Keita’s stint with Les Ambassadeurs lasted until 1984, when he moved to Paris to record his first solo album, Soro, in 1987. It received huge acclaim. Some years later he recorded Amen with Weather Report’s Joe Zawinul, pushing his musical blend further towards Western jazz-fusion modes. Now, a “best of” collection, The Mansa of Mali (Tusk), offers an opportunity to view his oeuvre in all its stages of development, an impressive disc and a comprehensive introduction to Keita’s work.
Until recently, South Africans had little access to the sounds of West Africa; now they can see Keita live. “It is time for South Africa to reconnect to the rest of the continent,” says Keita; South Africa “needs to be nursed back to health again. The only way for South Africa to become part of the continent again is through cultural exchange, through giving and exchanging,” he continues.
Keita’s experience differs from that of South African performers who have achieved recognition in Western countries but are treated with disdain in their own. His success in Europe and America is matched equally in Mali. “The first music that Malians listen to is that of the West African region,” he says.
Despite its success, Keita’s musical form has been relegated in the West to a little ghetto known as World Music. “Western people created a little box called World Music, from which they can conveniently draw ingredients of inspiration,” he says, citing as an example Michael Jackson’s sampling of words and rhythms from a Manu Dibango song.
“However, all is not lost because the African is still involved in the process of creation,” he says. “This still gives us a degree of control, for it is only we who can do this.”