When so many cultures converge, creativity is bound to flourish.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to any that some of the most groundbreaking styles of music have emerged from unique metropolises where people, cultures, and ideas collide and intermingle. There’s nothing groundbreaking in this. It’s exactly what we humans have done ever since we became human, or perhaps even before. Thus, every culture, person, and music on Earth is actually a remix of something much earlier. As the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun, but some things are certainly unique: the balti gosht (curry) from India, the guaguancó (dance) from Cuba, and epics of the Sahel from West Africa. There have always been regions known for attracting peoples from all over, and without fail these “melting pots” became perfect environments for new and exciting sounds.
I was born and raised in such a place—London. Even in terms of melting pots, it is somewhat special. The U.K. has been a major player in a number of transformative musical movements, particularly throughout the 20th century. The thing that makes it special is the way that this place has transformed whatever arrived at its shores. In every case, from reggae to drum and bass, rock ’n’ roll to prog rock, and hip-hop to grime, cities like London have smashed together the disparate sounds of their constituent parts in some of the most unpredictable ways.
The London that I grew up in was a place where one could find a little of every place that the British colonized. Ironically, the thing that made the U.K. such a great place for culture is that for around 500 years the British tried their very best to dominate and homogenize everywhere else, annexing peoples where possible and displacing where not. Inevitably, just like the capital of the Roman Empire, London ended up becoming a metropolis where people from throughout the empire came together. The Brits achieved the exact opposite of homogenization.
From reggae to drum and bass, rock ’n’ roll to prog rock, and hip-hop to grime, cities like London have smashed together the disparate sounds of their constituent parts in some of the most unpredictable ways.
Thus, my East London community featured traditions from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Barbados … and that was just my street! (My home was one of three Trinidadian households on that street.) This is all to give you some idea of the level of integration. If you imagine growing up with so many cultures co-existing together, then you can understand why re-mixing became so second nature. What do you get when you cross Chicago house, Kingston dub, New York hip-hop, and Indian bhangra? Jungle aka drum and bass!
A typical Friday night for 25-year-old me might have included going to hear some music at the Blue Note, packed with an audience that was beyond excited to check out the “Jungle Beat” set, featuring Talvin Singh, a young Indian tabla genius educated in the Indian Carnatic tradition; Squarepusher, a young bass virtuoso who sounds a bit like Jaco, but also chops up James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” into microscopic pieces, rearranged on the fly into densely configured 180-plus-bpm drum patterns, which seem to go on forever and never really repeat; and a young, quirky Icelandic vocal gymnast who was somewhat unknown at the time named Björk.
On a Saturday night, I may have gone out to see the Jazz Warriors, a 20-piece big band that featured some of the hottest names in British jazz, such as saxophonist Steve Williamson, drummer Mark Mondesir, bassist Gary Crosby, pianist Julian Joseph, marimba player Orphy Robinson, and singer Cleveland Watkis. The Jazz Warriors were a collective of world-class, young, Black British jazz musicians, who came up with their own unique mix by blending bebop, reggae, funk, Afrobeat, and more.
Sunday night I may have spent onstage at the Jazz Cafe with my own band, Quite Sane, which featured members from South Africa, Mauritius, Jamaica, Zimbabwe, St. Kitts, and, of course, Trinidad and Tobago. Though this band was influenced by jazz, and in particular the M-Base I heard coming out of New York while growing up, we were also very influenced by hip-hop (Public Enemy, Mobb Deep, A Tribe Called Quest, etc.), as well as by Parliament-Funkadelic, Chaka Khan, Cecil Taylor, Miriam Makeba, Beenie Man, Fela Kuti, the Jazz Warriors, and even Igor Stravinsky! Want to know what this crazy mix sounded like? Check out our 2002 release, The Child of Troubled Times.
The thriving U.K. scene still continues to churn out a dizzying number of sub-genres (grime, AB-groove, broken beat, acid jazz, nu-jazz), and artists (Sons of Kemet, Soweto Kinch, Sona Jobarteh, James Blake, Lion Babe, Stormzy), who are the product of combined elements from all over. Who knows what will come next?
The Malian master blows Bill Frisell's mind. The technique, tone, and conceptual breadth of his debut album, Mande Guitar, will astonish you, too.
Boubacar "Badian" Diabaté's debut release, Mande Guitar, will shatter your preconceptions about what the instrument is truly capable of. Don't believe me? Then take it from Bill Frisell, the sonic groundbreaker who practically reinvented the jazz guitar playbook. In Frisell's words, "Boubacar 'Badian' Diabaté blows my mind. He's doing things I've never heard anyone do before."
Comprised of mostly solo guitar gems with occasional overdubs and a smattering of guitar duets (with Badian's brother Manfa Diabaté and producer/African music historian Banning Eyre), Mande Guitar is a musical kaleidoscope, imbued with unexpected moments of jaw-dropping virtuosity. While the album's instrumentation is stripped-down, the original plan was even more austere. Eyre had wanted Badian [that nickname translates as "tall father"] to record a strictly solo guitar album. Along the way, some compromises were made, including the addition of percussionist Baye Kouyaté, who plays tama (talking drum) and calabash on one track, "Fadento." "Some people like to just listen to one instrument, but others like to hear the ambience of an interaction between players, so I wanted to touch both things and strike a balance," says Badian. "Also, when you play solo, you have to cover everything—you have to keep the line, the harmony, and the rhythm, whereas when someone is accompanying you, you're freer to do a lot of things that you can't do if you're playing alone."
Badian Diabaté et Goussou Kouyaté
In Badian's circle of musicians, the cultural norm is that everyone is raised to be an adept multi-instrumentalist. We know that most guitarists can dabble on bass, but in Badian's clique, it's the real deal—there's no faking it. "I usually perform with two or three additional musicians, and we'd switch instruments from song to song. It's very normal to start with one instrument and then move on to another and to experience the music from these different directions. The musicians I play with can play multiple instruments: guitar, ngoni (a 4-string instrument), tama, etc. If I have a drummer, he can typically play the calabash. I've actually made recordings in Mali where I've played all of these instruments. In concert, I mostly play guitar, but I would also play some ngoni or some tama."
A Rich Musical Tradition
Guitar geeks might tune into Mande Guitar for its fretboard fireworks, but for Badian the album serves a greater purpose. "I wanted to show the world the value of this culture," he says. "There's rock 'n' roll, there's jazz. Everything's out there and people know those things, but they don't know that this rich culture exists."
Boubacar "Badian" Diabaté (left) recorded Mande Guitar with his brother, Manfa (right), at Afropop Worldwide's Studio 44 in Brooklyn, New York. In Diabaté's circle of musicians, everyone is a multi-instrumentalist and able to switch duties from song to song. "It's very normal to start with one instrument and then move onto another and to experience the music from these different directions," Diabaté says.
In Badian's case, his rich musical culture dates back several generations. "I was born in a griot family. In the world of griots, people grow up in an environment where music is a traditional profession—my mother was a singer. My father was a functionary, an official in the government of Mali. Although he was a griot, he did not play guitar. It's a world where music is 'the thing' and you're surrounded by all of these instruments." His first instrument, when he was very young, was the tama. From there he went to the ngoni, which a lot of Malian guitarists start on. "Ngoni is the principal instrument of griots in Mali, along with voice," says Badian, "The ngoni is also the closest [traditional] instrument to guitar in Africa, so the natural instinct of a guitarist in the tradition is to try to imitate the ngoni. The guitarist improvises with the sound of the ngoni in his ear." Baidan switched to guitar when he was about 10, after hearing the music of Mande guitar great Bouba Sacko.
"The ngoni is also the closest [traditional] instrument to guitar in Africa, so the natural instinct of a guitarist in the tradition is to try to imitate the ngoni."
The origins of Mande Guitar began in 1995, when Eyre went to Africa to study guitar with Djelimady Tounkara for six months. One day, Badian came over to the house and was introduced by Tounkara, who, with a slight mix of (as Eyre put it) "disapproval and awe," described Badian as a "young player who will surpass me one day." Eyre had a Hohner G3T that Badian really wanted, so Eyre proposed giving Badian the guitar in exchange for permission to film him. "I realized he was a unique talent," Eyre says. A deal was struck and Eyre filmed a two-hour session of Badian playing in both solo and duet (with ngoni) contexts, all taking place in a construction site repurposed as a studio.
Boubacar “Badian” Diabaté’s Guitars
Diabaté has a fondness for electrics without headstocks, and this Steinberger SS-2F, which replaced a Hohner G3T, is his current plugged-in mainstay.
Steinberger SS-2F
Traveler Guitar
Seagull 12-string
Badian and Eyre remained friends, and Badian reached out to Eyre when he came to New York with his wife, singer Nene Soumano, in 2010. Numerous times over the years, Badian asked Eyre for help recording an album, and in 2021, when Eyre launched Lion Song Records, his request was fulfilled. Eyre pegged Badian to record Lion Song's debut offering, Mande Guitar.
Remaking Malian Music
Eight of the cuts on Mande Guitar are traditional Malian songs, and the challenge for Badian was in trying to inject his own diverse musical personality into them while keeping true to the tradition. "I went to the Institut National des Arts de Bamako, which is the best music school in Bamako [Mali's capital], and there I learned Western pop music and jazz, pentatonic music, because there's a lot of pentatonic styles in Mali that's branched from the blues," says Badian. You'll hear such blending in "Bayini," the jazzy chromatic phrases in "Miri" and "Korosa," and some repeating short fragments in "Sakonke" played at hyper-speed à la Carlos Santana. He and Eric Clapton are Badian's favorite Western guitar heroes.
Dressed for his role as griot—a traditional artist who preserves and shares oral history through music, poetry, or storytelling—Boubacar "Badian" Diabaté cradles his Seagull acoustic 12-string. While he also plays 6-string, Diabaté may be one of the finest 12-string acoustic players on the planet.
You'll also hear some unexpected cross-cultural influences on Mande Guitar. "My favorite track is 'Bayini,' which starts with a Mande feel, then jumps into a Spanish flamenco feel," Badian says. "That's to show that Mande music can be fused with any kind of music, because music is universal. But for this record, I wanted to stick mostly to the Mande folklore. You might hear some of that stuff here or there, and on other projects I would bring in a lot more of those influences. But here I went for traditional Mande guitar."
"I wanted to show the world the value of this culture."
Exemplary Technique
In keeping with the traditional right-hand technique of Malian guitar players, Badian plays using his thumb and index finger. This method can look unusual to uninitiated Westerners watching the guitarist use his index finger to pluck in both directions. But Badian plays with an exemplary version of this technique that is impressive and incendiary. "I'm going up and down like a pick," he explains. "The fingernail becomes like a flatpick, and just with the thumb and forefinger I can play four strings. The thumb plays the tonic of the key, which is very defining to the atmosphere of the piece. The thumb's main role is to keep that in the picture at all times. It's not exactly like playing a bass line. Rather, its main role is to emphasize the tonic. However, there are times when the thumb will also contribute to a melody."
TIDBIT: Producer Banning Eyre originally wanted Diabaté to record a solo guitar album, but the guitarist insisted on overdubs and a few duets to add additional colors.
There are a few unusual tunings on Mande Guitar, like F–A–D–G–C–E, but most of the album is in standard tuning, and the album was recorded live with no click track. The only overdubbing was on tracks where Badian accompanied himself.
"The fingernail becomes like a flatpick, and just with the thumb and forefinger I can play four strings. The thumb plays the tonic of the key."
Necessity Is the Mother of Invention
"Right now, I just have two guitars: a 12-string Seagull acoustic and a Steinberger electric," says Badian, whose penchant for headless guitars creates a conundrum of sorts. Double ball strings, as used on the Steinberger and his previous Hohner G3T (which got its neck broken off after being loaned to Badian's brother), are hard to find even in music capitals like New York City and Los Angeles. But where there's a will, there's a way. "Even now, there's no store in Mali where you can buy these kinds of strings. The first thing to do is try to get someone that's going to France to bring you some," explains Badian. "But sometimes I would just make my own double-ball strings. I would cut strings and attach a new ball to them. You take the little ring off another string and wind it very tight."
This Seagull 12-string and Steinberger SS-2F are Badian's only two guitars. Getting strings for the Steinberger is nearly impossible in Mali, so he has them shipped from friends and family in New York or France, or jerry-rigs his own double-ball-end strings.
Badian also sometimes relies on a care package from family for accessories. "I get strings from my brother in New York, and I just use whatever he sends. My preference is medium gauge strings, but I'll work with whatever comes in." His resolve to make any piece of gear work is the antithesis of how GAS-stricken gear nerds roll, and Badian is living proof that tone is, indeed, in the fingers. "When I play a gig, I'll rent an amp, and I'll work with whatever I get. As long as it works, I'll make it sound good."
YouTube It
With transcendent elegance and virtuosity, Boubacar Diabaté, on 12-string, and kora player Ballaké Sissoko team up for a performance at a Parisian festival. Prepare to be blown away by their improvisational genius. It's that simple.
The guitar legend reminisces about his time as a session player, playing with Miles Davis and Jaco, leading Shakti, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and the 4th Dimension, and shares how he stays creatively charged.
