Mamadou Diabaté (Burkinabe musician)

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This article is about the Burkinabe musician. For the Malian musicians of the same name, see Mamadou Diabaté and Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté.
Mamadou Diabaté
Mamadou Diabate balafon player.jpg
Background information
Born1973
Burkina Faso
Occupation(s)Musician, composer
InstrumentsBalafon, percussion
Websitewww.mamadoudiabate.com

Mamadou Diabaté (born 1973) is a Burkinabe musician mostly known for his balafon playing.[1] He lives in Vienna, Austria[2] and has toured internationally[3] with his ensemble Mamadou Diabaté & Percussion Mania.[4]

Life and work[]

Diabaté was born in 1973 into a jeli musician family in southwest Burkina Faso.[5] At five years old, he began musical training with his father Penegue Diabaté, who was known for his balafon playing throughout his Sambla-speaking home region and elsewhere in Burkina Faso.[5] Three years later, he began apprenticeships with other regionally renowned balafon players.[6] At the age of 11, he moved from his home village to Bobo-Dioulasso, where he honed his balafon playing and learned other percussion instruments including the talking drum and djembe.[5] Three years later Diabaté began playing with his father[5] in an ensemble that received first prize at the arts competition of the 1988[7] National Culture Week of Burkina Faso in Koudougou and Reo.[8] In 1998, he won the prize again in Bobo-Dioulasso[8] as a founding member of the traditional music ensemble Landaya.[2]

In 2000 Diabaté moved to Vienna, Austria,[2] where he recorded and released his first album Sababu Man Dogo (2001) on the label Extraplatte.[9] In 2002, he released on the same label the solo album Keneya, the first publicly issued disc to feature traditional Sambla balafon music.[10] This music is notable for its complex speech surrogate system, where the words of the Sambla language are translated into music in a similar fashion to the more famous case of talking drum communication.[11] Ensuing projects included several collaborations, including Mutua (2012) with jazz saxophonist Wolfgang Puschnig,[12] The Snow Owl: Normas (2014) with Juan García-Herreros,[13] and Masaba Kan (2014) with Cheick Tidiane Seck and kora player Toumani Diabaté as guest artists.[14]

Since 2006, Diabaté has toured with his group Mamadou Diabaté & Percussion Mania, sharing the featured role with his cousin and fellow balafonist Yacouba Konate.[5][15][16] Their album Kanuya (2011) won the 2011 Austrian World Music Award.[17] In 2012, the group won the "Balafon d'or" at the Triangle du balafon festival in Sikasso, Mali.[18]

Diabaté has led and collaborated in presentations of the Sambla balafon tradition internationally, including classes and workshops at Victoria University[19] and Dartmouth College[20] as well as lectures at Princeton University,[21] University of Delaware,[22] and Brandeis University.[23]

In 2016, he was made Knight of the National Order of Burkina Faso for his role in promoting Burkinabe art and culture internationally.[24]

In 2009, Diabaté founded Sababu, a non-profit primary school in Bobo-Dioulasso, and is chairman of the school's associated non-profit organization.[25]

Critical Appraisal[]

Bastiaan Springer wrote in the Afropop Worldwide:"When Diabaté is on stage playing the balafon, something magical happens between him and the audience. With his tight strokes, he makes the audience move. When this 46-year-old Burkinabe virtuoso is on fire and plays as fast as he can—which is really fast—the audience stands up and starts dancing. At the end of the show everybody is dancing like mad."[26]

Discography[]

Diabaté has appeared on the following albums:[27]

Album Year
Sababu Man Dogo 2001
Keneya 2002 (reissued 2019)
Sira Fila 2003
Folikelaw 2005
Kamalenya 2008
Sambla Fadenya: The Art of Sadama Diabate 2009
Tusia Fadenya: The Art of Daouda Diabate 2009
Yala 2010
Fenba 2010 (reissued 2019)
Kanuya 2011
Mutua 2012
The Snow Owl: Normas 2013
Masaba Kan 2014
Barokan 2015
Douba Foli: Noir et Blanc 2016
Nakan 2019

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ "WOMAD Festival, review: Feeling the spirit". Evening Standard. 2017-07-31. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Mamadou Diabate - WOMEX". www.womex.com. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  3. ^ "Burkina Faso's Mamadou Diabaté goes on world tour". Music In Africa. 2018-05-21. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  4. ^ "Mamadou Diabaté's Percussion Mania". Discogs. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e "Playbill for Mamadou Diabaté & Percussion Mania" (PDF). Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth. November 7, 2018. Retrieved June 23, 2019.
  6. ^ "Concert de Musique Sambla| Princeton Department of Music". music.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  7. ^ "West African Virtuoso Mamadou Diabate | UVic School of Music Events Calendar". Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b "La Semaine Nationale de la culture au fil du temps - leFaso.net, l'actualité au Burkina Faso". lefaso.net. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  9. ^ "Extraplatte". Discogs. Retrieved 2019-06-24.
  10. ^ Strand, Julie Lynn (2009-05-01). The Sambla Xylophone: Tradition and Identity in Burkina Faso. WesScholar. OCLC 705087942.
  11. ^ McPherson, Laura (2018-06-18). "Musical surrogate languages in the documentation of complex tone: the case of the Sambla balafon". TAL2018, Sixth International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages. ISCA: ISCA: 62–66. doi:10.21437/tal.2018-13.
  12. ^ "mamadou diabaté*, jon sass*, wolfgang puschnig* - Mutua". Discogs. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  13. ^ Gama, Raul da (2014-03-24). "Juan García-Herreros - The Snow Owl: Normas". Latin Jazz Network. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  14. ^ "Toumani Diabaté | Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  15. ^ "13 Pop, Rock and Jazz Concerts to Check Out in N.Y.C. This Weekend". The New York Times. 2018-11-01. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  16. ^ "Mamadou Diabate & Percussion Mania | Arts Initiative Columbia University". artsinitiative.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  17. ^ "Austrian World Music Awards". www.worldmusicawards.at. Archived from the original on 2018-02-01. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  18. ^ "Festival "Triangle du Balafon" : Le Burkina Faso remporte le "balafon d'or"". L'Actualité du Burkina Faso 24h/24 (in French). 2012-02-13. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  19. ^ "Camp Mamadou". DRUM VICTORIA. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  20. ^ "Music resident Mamadou Diabate connects language to music". The Dartmouth. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  21. ^ "Sambla Rhythms Bring African Language to Life — Linguistics". linguistics.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  22. ^ "event". www.lingcogsci.udel.edu. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  23. ^ "Samblan musicians induce a jubilee of expression with the xylophone". The Brandeis Hoot. 2016-10-21. Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  24. ^ par Juste en passant. "Ambassade du Burkina Faso à Vienne : Remise de distinctions honorifiques et célébration en différé de la Journée internationale de la Femme - leFaso.net, l'actualité au Burkina Faso". lefaso.net (in French). Retrieved 2019-06-25.
  25. ^ "Who is Sababu". Sababu. Retrieved 2020-01-06.
  26. ^ "Balafon, Burkina Faso to Vienna: An Interview With Mamadou Diabaté". Afropop Worldwide. 2019-12-05. Retrieved 2020-02-05.
  27. ^ "DISCOGRAPHY". Mamadou Diabaté – Balafon Master from Burkina Faso (in German). Retrieved 2019-06-24.


External links[]

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