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Artist: Rokia Traor茅
Category: Africa
The most recent chanteuse to emerge from Mali is a twenty-something singer/songwriter called Rokia Traor茅. Her rise to prominence has been as unconventional as it has rapid and while recognisably Malian, her music has a correspondingly individual flavour.
In many parts of West Africa music as a profession is generally reserved for a certain lowly caste called the 'griots'. However, Traor茅's family are from the Bamana ethnic group who do not observe this restriction so strictly. As a girl she thus felt free to sing with others at wedding celebrations, despite coming from a privileged background. Her parents were not musicians but they were keen followers of a wide variety of local and international styles which she hungrily absorbed as the family spent much of her childhood abroad.
While studying in France, she made her first public performance with a rap group. This experience gave her the confidence to begin writing her own songs, and before long she had been 'discovered' and was performing on the French festival circuit to glowing reviews. She became a prot茅g茅 of the great Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure, who encouraged her to record her first album 惭辞耻苍别茂蝉蝉补. It was enthusiastically received on its release in 1998.
At home in Bamako she is known as the 'Malian Tracy Chapman' for her socially aware lyrics and guitar toting ways. Her delicately understated vocals could not be more different from the strident tones of most of Mali's formidable diva sisterhood, none of whom would be seen dead on stage with an acoustic guitar.
Likewise, the musical accompaniment Traor茅 has chosen is unique in the way it combines traditional instruments like the balafon (giant wooden xylophone) and the tiny n'goni, which are not normally heard together. She also uses kora and calabash percussion which lovers of Malian music will be familiar with from the music of Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure respectively.
Last year's 'Wanita' album built on the success of her first, with similar arrangements and increasingly assured vocals. She is now one of the top selling African artists in France and looks set to achieve a similar status in the UK soon.
Biography by Jon Lusk, November 2001
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