Word on the streets of Bamako, Mali, is that new sensation Rokia Traore will sing for those lucky enough to gain entry into paradise. And honestly speaking, the superstitious Malians don’t doubt a word of this.
Who can blame them? The Traores are a noble family. Her ancestors were warriors from the Bambara (Bamana) ethnic group, located in the region of Segou on the River Niger north of Bamako, who fought Arabic and other ethnic invaders. This history, blended with Traore’s light lilting voice with its soft lisp that sends listeners into a trance, are probably what have got local Malians enthralled.
On the music chart of United Kingdom publication Froots, her latest offering Wanita has been voted album of the year 2001 with African music’s king Youssou N’dour trailing behind.
Mouneissa, her first album released in 1998, sold more than 40Â 000 copies in Europe, attracting favourable comparisons of her talents to that of artists like Angelique Kidjo.
But critics wondered how long she’d last. However, when she performed at the Pizza Express Jazz Club in London in 1999, the show sold out for four nights, a clear indication she’d come to stay.
With Wanita Traore has already rocked France and Australia, where she performed at the Sydney Opera House and the World of Music, Art and Dance in Adelaide. She’s played London’s Barbican Centre and done a recent stint in the United States, where the media dubbed her a Malian Tracy Chapman.
Spotted by Jacques Szalay, the director of the French Cultural Centre in Bamako, Traore was at first discouraged from entering the music industry by her father Mamadou Traore, a diplomat who feared his daughter might find herself in the high-flying world of concert dates and drugs.
Through Szalay’s encouragement, though, Traore performed at the influential Musiques Matisses festival at Angouleme, sharing the stage with celebrated singer/guitarist Ali Fakou, later winning the Radio France Internationale prize as African discovery of 1997. Within a year her career had gone stratospheric.
Traore’s music is a conglomeration of styles — like the Indian strains in the song Soub — which she learned in countries her father’s diplomatic career took her to.
Particularly interesting is her band, made up of musicians drilled in traditional rousing instruments like the bafalon, a wooded xylophone, and the n’goni, a paddle-like four-string guitar. In content, her songs announce the unfathomable destiny of human beings. She sings poignant odes to the dignity of women who survive in Mali’s chauvinistic society. In many ways Traore is a trailblazer for their emancipation.
In one of her album’s tracks Mancipera, she sings: “A free relationship is preferable to marriage, the girl declares/ But such a relationship is very fragile, answers the wise man/ Perhaps, but the fate of the wife is no more enviable.”
About the situation of Malian women, Traore has been quoted as saying: “The baffling thing for me is the way in which small girls are already prepared for their subservient role by the behaviour of their parents. They see their mothers just having to obey and having no will of their own … Obviously Malian society will have a great step towards modernity when women know what ‘will’ means.”
Traore, who has been nominated for best female promising artist of Africa at the Kora All Africa Music Awards, performs in South Africa and 10 other Southern and East African countries this month.
Catch Rokia Traore at the Vodacom Jazz Indaba at Moretele Park, Mamelodi, on November 4 and Melville’s Bassline on November 5. For more information, contact Raison Naidoo at the French
Institute on (011)Â 836Â 0561.