‘‘MANDINGROOVE’’
Fifty years. We’ll have had to wait all that time to finally hear him on his own record. Yet Cheick Amadou Tidiane Seck is no newcomer to compact disc. Indeed, the man born in Ségou in 1953 has already made a few recordings since joining the world of music. That was in the early Seventies, when he was still teaching plastic arts in Bamako. “I was very much into Afro-American, and World, popular music, Louis Armstrong, James Brown, Marvin Gaye… When I was younger I had a group, the Afro Blues Band, which did repeats of all that stuff.” It was the Golden Age of the big bands, and the young man who’d grown up with the songs of the Mandingo tradition, sung to him by his mother, would join the ranks of the Super Rail Band alongside Mory Kanté and Salif Keita. His very special fingering technique, inspired by the jazz-funk touch of Jimmy Smith, was already working miracles on the keyboards, both electric and eclectic. “He was one of my inspirations. It took me five years to get away from his phrasing and create my own, which carries the tradition.” It was that touch which brought a difference to his style on numerous records as early as the end of the Seventies (he spent this period in Ivory Coast exile due to the military junta, a synonym for political trouble for Cheick-Tidiane, who was imprisoned several times).
In the course of the last twenty-five years, the signature of Cheick Amadou Tidiane Seck could be found not only with the famous “Ambassadeurs”, Mory Kanté, Thione Seck, Touré Kunda, Salif Keita (“Soro”, “Amen”, “Folon”), Joe Zawinul (“My People”) and Graham Haynes (“The Griot’s Footsteps”, “Transition”), but also in experimental explorations of the London jungle scene with Marque Gilmore (DRUM FM)… It’s a long list, and it’s not exhaustive, but even if he’s recognised by his peers as much for his talents as an arranger-composer as for his skills as an instrumentalist, the fact remains that he’s relatively unknown to the public. One had to wait for Hank Jones to arrive before his personality would finally break surface. “That old gentleman offered me his hand. That was quite something: an old hand trusting me by giving me something enormous to do. And he didn’t think twice about giving me credit for the work I did.” The occasion was the magnificent “Sarala”, a meeting between jazz and Mandingo traditions for which Cheick Amadou Tidiane Seck recruited the musicians and also wrote the arrangements, which were very sophisticated. Since then, the record has become a classic, and we’ve been waiting for its sequel for almost ten years.
In the meantime, Cheick-Tidiane hasn’t been idle, taking his music to concert audiences wherever possible, spending three months at U.C.L.A. in California (teaching on the theme « Encounters between West African music and jazz »), multiplying even more the crossbreeding of different cultures (in Essaouira with the Gnawas, in Paris with Ornette’s Prime Time, in New York with the pyrotechnics of the downtown scene, but also with old friends Amadou and Mariam…). It’s difficult to write the resume of a career like that, going off in all different directions at once, yet never losing the thread of its ideas or desires. His last exploit is quite symbolic proof of his need to remain in contact with the scene, so as not to forget the hard realities of his country, even if he’s been a Paris resident since 1985. He was the initiative behind “Jam Sahel”, a night of music (of all kinds) in which all the « warriors » around jostled for position. Things not only warmed up, they became white hot. All for the benefit of the « SOS Sahel » Organisation founded by President Senghor, whose aims were to fight the encroaching desert by raising funds. “We’ll be back every year on June 17th.” You can make an appointment right now.
In the meantime, let’s get back to the object we’ve all been waiting so long for. The record began to take shape in 1999, and was completed in 2003, which was the time it took to reunite all the accomplices who recorded it, from Paris to New York via Los Angeles. The well-named “Mandingroove”. It’s a title with a double meaning, « body and soul » to paraphrase Ellington, and which reminds us that if making your feet dance is important, so is nourishing your mind. “In other words, everything that vibrates and lives inside me. This disc gives the most accurate definition of me; it’s the terrain of a whole life of music. That’s why there are many guest artists, even if a good number of my friends aren’t present. It talks about why I melt into the diversity of musical currents I’ve been through. It’s one part tradition, one part creation. And there’s still the desire to have both feet in popular music, but with openings that are more contemporary. I’ve tried to create my own synthesis of everything I hear, from oriental modes to electronic rhythms. I’m like a big tape-recorder that picks up everything that goes by, everything that happens: rhythmically, melodically, harmonically…” You need only to listen to understand this gift of ubiquity, which is what it’s all about.
This is powerfully entrenched music, yet it is naturally open to all winds. Urbanity seeps from it, yet it’s not forgotten the deep furrows of the land. Its themes bear witness to its identity, strong in colour yet nourished by universal values. It is festive music for reuniting people, but also a music of anger, one that remembers it has a message to bear in these uncertain times. CATS – an acronym which delightfully suits him, the feline caressing and clawing – has much to say between the lines about a rich universe that is the crossroads of many worlds. Eclectic, of course; extravagant, misunderstood. That is what this album is about, a path with dense foliage far from today’s highways, peopled with women’s voices and words of commitment, inhabited by individuals (César Anot, Mao Otahek, Marque Gilmore Ali Wagué, Moriba Koita, Daniel Moreno, Frank Lowe, Mama Keita, Chico Freeman, Craig Harris, Guy Sangué, Michel Alibo, Mama Kouyaté, Vincent Ségal and many others…) who serve the community, often transcended by this master of the house, sown with uncertainties, moments of lightness and moments with more gravity, a way of travelling farther, and with rhythm, too. This density is merely an echo of the complexity of the world today, which is reflected in all of us. Each title constitutes an essential piece of this puzzle, shattered and brilliant, that is the asserted personality of this man of the Tukolor people, born in Ségou, raised in the fervour of decolonisation, and come to maturity on the planet of music. In a word, a man of the world.
A few words about each title:
N’tamana: “It’s a traditional song inspired by a legend about a man who lived under the water. That’s what I’m singing about, and at the end, Elvita Delgado from Venezuela takes up the same idea in Spanish… originally it was to be a duet with Chico Freeman, who answers me on the saxophone, followed by a tap dance solo that sounds like percussion!”
Tigila Yougba: “You can translate it as ‘Get out there and have a great time’… Actually it’s a basic groove I’ve been playing a long while; my musicians take a bow over it at the end of a concert. They were the ones who asked me to make it a tune all of its own. That’s why this dance music is dedicated to each of my comrades, those who’ve now gone but also those who are still here. Like the young rapper Lassin King, who sings here in the Bambara language.”
Worocola: “A title that’s a pleonasm and a play on words at the same time. A ‘woro’ is a kola tree, but ‘worocola’ is also someone who washes the kola-nuts. Whatever, this nut is a symbol everything in our society, from weddings to mourning… I wrote the song in the car, just after eating some kola nuts. It was a reaction to the elections on April 21st, 2002. We’re all immigrants’ children, that’s why the words are a mix of Bambara and French.”
Siya Woloma: “A tune built around Senufo balafons and their pentatonic scales. I’m warning Africa against a new plague, the return to ethnic wars! So I’m recommending mutual respect, and the values of ‘otherness’ ».
To Banimato: “Literally ‘the dance of the clowns’, which is a salute to the musicians haunting the towns of West Africa. It’s a tune written in a false nine-beat, which existed traditionally. Did they dance! But here I rewrote the groove, and you can hear the trombone of Craig Harris. The elephant!”
Dounougna: “’Dunya’ means ‘the world’ in Arabic. It’s the great thing that has no price, it’s what you have to preserve, and all its ties have to be redone… that’s why Dwayne Knox sings on it ; he’s a spirituals-singer who was one of my students at U.C.L.A. It’s a tune I wrote in 1988, when I was told to return back home. Within a month… But I was born in French Sudan! The song doesn’t express any anger, just my disappointment.”
Saniyo: “This piece was given to me in 1984 by my aunts in Gambia. They sang it for me accompanying themselves on gourds. I was born with this rhythm and Tukolor music, the ‘yela’ that sounds like reggae’s ancestor. Over the top I bring out the meeting between two voices, the voice of Idrissa Diop, a nod in the direction of Senegal, and the voice of Paban Das Baul, to show how interested I am in Indian music.”
Mogokouna: “It means ‘scandal’ or ‘malicious gossip’. Don’t judge me by what others are saying. In the Seventies I played this on a clavinet. I still have the arrangements, by the way, but I’ve added a very ‘jazz’ solo by guitarist Misja Fitzgerald.”
Da Monzon: “A classic 3/4, brightened up by a funkier 4/4 in the middle. In the same way, if you can still feel the tradition in it, there’s also the violin and the cello. Above all, it’s a tribute to my home town: Da Monzon is the King of Ségou who remains in the collective memory, and this centuries-old composition by Sokoufo Soriba proves it.”
M’baoudi: “The spirit, in a way. We used to play it with the Rail Band. I’ve brought it up to date in my own way.”
Watjoro: “This one’s been one of my classics for thirty years. It’s a kind of pentatonic form that belongs to the Senufo people, and the chorus says: ‘The victor of ploughing has passed…”
Le blues des oubliés: “A Peul (Fulani) scale that I arranged in a hip-hop style. We did our own samples! The song talks about forgotten people, about slave-traders of all colours, the fact that men used to be put into slavery, but now they’re human souls. A new world-order has to be set up, a fairer distribution. And to say all that I wanted to, there’s a diversity of horizons: Amina does the oriental scales, Njama brings an Indian touch, Haroun Teboul represents the Sufi song tradition, Craig Harris slips in an ‘intimist’ blues solo… ”
Gnogonbogna: “Or ‘Baman Blues’. It’s like a blues that invites you to become aware of those around you. That without this dimension, nothing can succeed. Actually it’s a tune that’s a transposition of what listened to on Radio Mali when I was a kid. I played it as an instrumental in those days. Here, the lyrics talk about Lumumba, Biko, Kwame N’Kruma, all those people who didn’t have time to put their visions into practice. Nahawa Doumbia came along to add her voice to it.”