Tributes: Malian musician Toumani Diabaté. Photo: Laurent Emmanuel/AFP
Mali’s “king of kora” Toumani Diabaté died last Friday, 19 July, at the age of 58, after a short illness, the musician’s family announced on social media.
“My dear dad is gone forever,” the Malian great’s son Sidiki Diabaté, who is also a musician, wrote on Facebook.
Toumani Diabaté was a master of the African stringed instrument, the kora.
He died at a private clinic in Bamako, the capital of the West African nation, another member of Diabaté’s family said.
Diabaté was born in 1965 to a family of griots — storytellers who are the guardians of Mali’s traditions and oral histories.
Fellow stars of the vast West African music scene paid tribute to Diabaté.
Senegal’s Youssou N’Dour lauded “a virtuoso of the kora, an unmatched musical arranger” in a post on X.
Malian Grammy award-winning singer Oumou Sangaré, known as the “Songbird of Wassoulou”,
said Diabaté was “a bridge between our ancestral traditions and modernity”.
Salif Keita, the “Golden Voice of Africa”, lamented “the loss of [Mali’s] national treasure”. — AFP