Balla Tounkara joins a rich African-American tradition, griot musicians from West Africa who have come to the U.S. on their own to make their way in a land where their ancestors once came unwillingly. Tounkara grew up near the Malian city of Kita, a renowned center for griot arts. The Tounkaras of Kita descend from a family patriarch named Magandianyoule, who played a key role in the founding of the Malian Empire, 800 years ago. In Mali, that's heavy karma. "Boudefo is one family," Tounkara told Afropop. "If somebody has another name, it comes from the mother's side. My grandfather is a djelifili, chief of the griots. He's 116."

Another of Tounkara's grandfathers was the late Batourou Sekou Kouyaté, one of the most respected kora players of the 20th century. Tounkara grew up playing drums: the doundoun, djembe, and tama (talking drum), "like every kid in Kita," he told me. He became serious about kora as a teenager, after he'd moved to the capital, Bamako. Tounkara practiced the demanding harp the way he does everything--with ferocious determination. "Sometimes my grandfather got mad at me because I was so curious," he recalled. "When he was not around, I'd come and take his kora and play for ten, fifteen hours. Then I got my little kora, and I'd go in my room and play until five in the morning. People got tired of me."

In Bamako, Tounkara played street weddings as all griots do, but he soon realized that traditional music was not his true calling. "I learned the tradition," he said, "That's who I am. But I wanted to have my own experience. In my room, I was always listening to other music, Bob Marley, Diana Ross, John Lee Hooker, James Brown, Tina Turner, Tracy Chapman, Beatles, Pink Floyd, Manfred Mann, the Police. My grandfather told me the kora could play anything. He played the national anthems of France, United States, Guinea, and Mali. Okay, I said, he did these things. Why can't I?" Tounkara tuned his kora to pop music tapes and learned to accompany them. He nagged professional musicians like his uncle, the great griot guitarist Djelimady Tounkara, to teach him the names of notes and chords, and then he found them on his kora. With instinctive faith, Tounkara prepared himself for a career he could only imagine.

In 1996, Tounkara had a life-changing experience. One night, his uncle took him to a soirée at the home of Babani Sissoko, at the time one of the wealthiest men in Mali and certainly its most generous arts patron. Tounkara got his chance when his uncle began to play one of the bulwarks of the griot repertoire, "Sunjata," the story of the first king of the Malian Empire. "I just sang for five minutes," Tounkara recalled, "and Babani said, `One minute. Who is this boy?' And he just stopped the music and wrote out a check for $12,000.00." Soon afterwards, Tounkara was on a plane bound for the United States.

As impressive as any part of Tounkara's remarkable story is the way he handled himself once in New York. A number of griot musicians live there, but even Africa-minded New Yorkers rarely cross paths with them since they perform almost exclusively at private West African gatherings. For Tounkara, this lifestyle defeats the purpose of traveling to America. "There are Malians who have been here five, six years, and they still don't speak English," he said. "I come with my passion, but in this country, you have to speak English." While pursuing language studies, Tounkara discovered Greenwich Village. "I just took my kora in the snow. I took the train to the Village. People said, `Wow, what is this?' `It's a kora.' `Oh. Want to jam?' Some people humiliated me. `You can't play the funky music with that.' I said, `Just plug me in and see what I can do.' In one month, I got famous in the Village. Everybody want to play with me."

After eight months, Tounkara moved on to Boston where a friend from Bamako, percussionist Joh Camara, was living. His English coming together, Tounkara began to teach and perform. He managed to snag a visiting Malian guitarist, Modibo Diabaté, and recorded a set of traditional griot songs with just kora and guitar. This became his first CD, Music from Mali, West Africa, which he placed in Tower Records and sold while playing on the street in Harvard Square. All the while, Tounkara was meeting musicians, sitting in, jamming, listening, learning, teaching, gigging, and saving money to make a more ambitious recording. "It was tough," he said, "But my parents were not lazy people. They taught me you don't let people take you down. You can always stand up for yourself. So I was playing in the [subway] in winter. Christmas. I was playing `Jingle Bells' on the kora. If I save a little money, I go to studio. I record a little bit. If I am out of money, I leave it for months."

Tounkara ultimately completed his CD and released it himself in 2000. The result, Be Right, a set of ten diverse, well-executed tracks. Wesley Wirth, a fine local bass player and a veteran of numerous African music projects, helped Tounkara recruit talented support musicians. The CD visits ground familiar to Malian pop, combining the griot classic "Massane Cisse" with a slow blues riff, revving Guinea's venerable Latin-flavored pop up to muscular, sensuous funk ("Lemeneya," or "Strong Heart"), and morphing a slow griot melody into a rock anthem, à la Salif Keita ("Kelemagni" or "War"). Tounkara continues to build his career in Boston. He generally performs on Sunday nights with his band at the Middle East in Cambridge. This biography was adapted from a longer Boston Phoenix feature by Banning Eyre, available under Features on this site.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre