CHEICK-TIDIANE SECK ‘‘MANDINGROOVE’’(Universal Music Jazz France / 980 117-1)
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.