The Malian singer Salif Keita has had a long and illustrious career, from his days fronting the Rail Band in the 1970s to international stardom, five Grammy nominations and more than 70 albums. As a boy afflicted with albinism, Keita took refuge in music. Now in his 70s, he commands an extraordinarily fluid and expressive voice, its beauty hovering over intricate patterns of rhythmic picked guitar in long undulating notes. There’s a reason people call him The Golden Voice of Africa.
But like many internationally celebrated world music icons, Keita most often performs with a large ensemble — rows of percussionists, multiple stringed-instrument players and ecstatic choirs of women vocalists. There’s nothing wrong with the full-band version of Keita’s art, however, given that even at its largest scale, the music centers around one indelible voice, it’s nice to hear him in a sparer setting. So Kono was recorded primarily in a Japanese hotel room, with the artist, an acoustic guitar and minimal accompaniment in ngoni, percussion and cello. The spareness of the arrangements give these cuts an astonishing emotional directness, as in the standout track, “Kanté Manfila,” which has been filmed for video. The song is named after Keita’s long-time collaborator, Kanté Manfila, the virtuoso guitarist and bandleader of Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux, which launched Keita into the global arena. The song is magnificently mournful, sublimely simple, a spider’s web of radiant guitar framing Keita’s free-flowing, ruminative vocalizations. You can certainly imagine how it would sound with more instruments, perhaps some percussion, a few back-up singers, a twitching bassline, and it would likely be good. However, it’s sort of perfect the way it is, and without any knowledge of the language, you can intuit warmth and memory, sadness and acknowledgement of mortality.
Not all of the material is that bare. The long, hypnotic “Soundiata” adds the banjo-like twang of ngoni and the handclap-ish patter of calabash the mix, courtesy of Badié Tounkara and Mamadou Kone dit “Prince,” respectively. Yet though the mesh of sounds is subtly denser, the spotlight continues to shine on Keita’s voice, a bit harsher here than in “Kanté Manfila,” but fierce and resilient and strong. “Tassi” supplements Keita’s dusky murmur with the softer, brighter tones of two backing singers, Julia Sarr and Olyza Zamati, without diluting the song’s fundamental clarity.
Still fundamentally, So Kono is about Keita. It quiets the clatter and stills the swell around one of Africa’s most beautiful voices and allows us to experience the spectral essence of this extraordinary artist straight on.
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