Reviews

Meanwhile, let us return to the object so much awaited for so many years; an album which started to take form in 1999 and was ended in 2003; the time to welcome all the accomplices, recorded between Paris, New York and Los Angeles. The good named “Mandingroove”. A title which has a double signification, body and heart to paraphrase Ellington, who points out that it’s important to make dance the feet, without forgetting to nourish the head. “That is to say all that vibrates and lives in me. This disc defines me exactly; it’s the ground of a whole life of music. That’s why there are so many guests, even if a lot of my friends are not present. It speaks about my faculty to melt into the diversity of the musical currents that I crossed. There is a part of tradition, another of creation. And always the desire to have the two feet in popular music but with more contemporary openings. I try to create my own synthesis of all that I hear, from the Eastern modes to the electronic rhythms. I am like a large tape recorder which collects all that is happening: rhythm, melody, harmony… ” you just have to prick up the ears to understand this ubiquity gift.

A strongly implanted music, but naturally opened to all the winds which oozes the urbanity but remembers the deep furrows of the countryside. A thematic which testifies his identity, high in colours but nourished with universal values. A music of festivals, reconciliation, but also of anger, which does not forget to carry a message in these dubious times. CATS – acronym which marvellously suit to this cat-like who cherishes and tears - has many things to say, between the lines of a rich universe, at the crossing of many worlds. Eclectic, of course. Weird, misunderstanding. Here is the matter of this album, bulky way so far from the current motorways, populated with women voices and engaged words, inhabited by individualities (César Anot, Mao Otayeck, Gilmore Mark, Ali Wagué, Moriba Koïta, Daniel Moreno, Frank Lowe, Mama Keita, Chico Freeman, Craig Harris, Guy Nsangué, Michel Alibo, Mama Kouyaté, Pibo Mark, Lansiné Kouyaté, Moussa Sissokho and much others…) to the service of the his collective, very often transcended by this master, strewn with interludes, of light moments and of more serious instants, just to travel the farther, and with much rhythms. This density only echoes to the complexity of the current world, which is reflected on each one of us. Each title constitutes an essential part of this puzzle, burst and bright, that is the personality of this Toucouleur born in Segou, raised in the enthusiasm of the decolonization, grown on the planet music. All things considered, a society man.

Mali Music