024: The Mandé Variations, by Toumani Diabaté

Toumani Diabaté (Mali)
The Mandé Variations (2008)
8 tracks, 58 minutes
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With 70 generations of jeli griots behind him, and his father known as the king of the 21-stringed Mandinka bridge-harp, the kora, Toumani Diabaté's path was all but laid out for him. By the time The Mandé Variations came out, he was already a star. Launching his career with an accomplished solo album, Kaira, in 1988, he’d gone on to release albums in collaboration with Taj Mahal, Damon Albarn, Danny Thompson, Ballake Sissoko and his own dance orchestra, and even won a Grammy for his duets with Ali Farka Touré. By 2008, twenty years since that first album, he decided to record another solo album: not as a talented young musician stepping out of his father’s shadow, but as the greatest living exponent of the kora.

This album is breathtaking. Every track is perfectly considered, and there is not one note out of place. Toumani’s nylon strings ripple like water, taking in unorthodox tunings to give textures traditionally inaccessible to kora players. There are breezes of influence from all through his career – flamenco here, Hindustani music there – but it all slots entirely into place. As is the way with the kora, it’s sometimes quite hard to get your head around the fact that what you’re listening to is just one person playing with two fingers and two thumbs; that’s even more the case with Toumani. It can sometimes feel like there’s three or four different melodies all happening at once, somehow juggled in the mind of a master.

The Mandé Variations is an album for contemplation. It’s always gentle, often bittersweet, and sometimes downright sad, but in the most beautiful way. Even one or two fun quotes (such as referencing The Good, The Bad and the Ugly theme in the track ‘Cantelowes’) don’t take away from the profundity of the piece, but just gives a glimpse into Toumani’s personality. For all his genre-bending projects before and since, this album remains the definitive Toumani Diabaté, and even quite possibly the last word in solo kora.