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Balla Tounkara, The Griot of Boston
It's another Sunday night at the Middle East, and upstairs in the Bakery, people are dancing. They're shouting support to the musicians, a tight, propulsive combo led by a young Malian musician who plays the traditional 21-string harp, the kora. For over a year, Balla Tounkara has been holding court here on Sunday nights, and by any measure, this gig is working. I spent some years playing with African and other like-minded musicians trying to build an audience for African music in Boston. I used to play this very venue with American kora player David Gilden of coraconnection.com, and we had some good nights, but nothing like this. I peruse the Bakery crowd and feel their exuberant, end-of-the-weekend energy surging as Tounkara's ensemble lashes out non-stop rhythm. I'm remembering that people used to call Gilden the "griot of Boston"--a reference to the musical bards of West Africa--but today, there's no doubting that Balla Tounkara claims that title.
The first time I met Tounkara, in Bamako, Mali, in 1995, I had no idea he had this in him. I was there studying guitar with Balla's uncle, Djelimady Tounkara, lead guitarist of the Super Rail Band and for me the greatest guitarist in Africa (the subject of my eventual book, "In Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali" on Temple University Press.) It was after a family wedding at the end of a long day of music in the dusty street by the Tounkara household that Balla Tounkara approached me with his kora. He had been eyeing my recording gear and wanted me to help him record his music. "I've got good songs," he told me in French, the only language we shared. "I want to mix the kora with other instruments--guitar, keyboards, bass. I want to put the kora into blues, jazz, funk--everything!"
Tounkara was one of many young musicians who wanted something from me, and at the time I was more interested in folklore than fusion. So when he took up his kora hoping to show me the music in his head, I missed it all: the kora technique, the clear-eyed vision, and most of all, the gorgeous singing voice, a voice with range and subtlety that approaches the timbre and emotional impact of Mali's best known singer, Salif Keita. Polite but oblivious, I blew him off.
No hard feelings, Tounkara told me in near-perfect English when we sat down in his Allston apartment on a recent Sunday afternoon. As it turns out, he did just fine without me.
Tounkara was born in a village called Boudefo, near Kita, a renowned center for griot arts. "The family of Tounkara is small," he told me. "We all come from one guy, Magandianyoule." Tounkara explained that the family patriarch had played a key role in the founding of the Malian Empire, 800 years ago. In Mali, that's heavy karma. "So Boudefo is one family--Tounkara. 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."
By the time I met him, Tounkara had played enough street weddings to know that traditional music was not his true calling. "I learned the tradition. That's who I am," he told me, "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 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.
Then 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 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 came 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 T 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 this year. 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"). Griot songs have powerful melodies, but lack universal dance rhythms, which presents a problem for musicians who want to turn this music into pop. Too often griot singers settle for stately but stiff drum machine accompaniment--one reason you don't hear much griot pop in African discos. Tounkara tackles this challenge admirably, weaving his kora and vocal melodies into backbeat funk, swing, a techno groove, and even ragamuffin pop. In short, Be Right realizes the crossover dream Tounkara described to me that faraway evening in Bamako.
After we spoke in Allston, it was time to go to the Middle East. Tounkara insisted that I sit in on guitar for a few songs. He coached me on a couple of his compositions and arrangements, naming the chords and rhythms as if he'd gone to Berklee. Tounkara's basic group that night was a quartet including Wirth on bass, Camara on djembe, and a young drummer named Eric Doob, who played with astounding energy and precision, even doubling Camara perfectly on traditional djembe patterns. The selections were relentlessly upbeat, playing more to Tounkara's powerful voice than to his kora chops, which would come through better in a more subdued setting. But the crowd was in his hands from the start. Whether it was funky kora blues, driving soukous-tinged Afropop, or innovative covers of Afropop hits, the group commanded attention and respect. Kenyan singer Sali Oyugi joined in on a few songs, notably Tounkara's elaborate composition in memory of slain Guinean street vendor Amadou Diallo, and a hard funk cover of the Fela Kuti classic, "Lady." Poet John Sinclair of New Orleans, who performs occasionally with Tounkara in the group Vox Pop, read a poem evoking the life of Robert Johnson over the bluesy finale. At closing time, neither the band nor the crowd wanted to leave. The griot of Boston had triumphed once again.
Banning Eyre, August, 2000
Find Balla Tounkara's music in the Afropop Shop.
First published: Boston Phoenix
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