Djelimady Tounkara brings his acoustic project to America

October 18, 2002

In 1993, while doing research for Afropop Worldwide, I met perhaps the most impressive guitarist I have ever laid eyes or ears upon, Djelimady Tounkara of Bamako, Mali. Seeing Djelimady's powerful fingers working the strings of an acoustic guitar, spinning out soulful, technically dazzling melodies and rhythms that clearly reached back centuries into the past of Manding music, was a revelation for me. I became an accolade pretty much on the spot, and at the end of my stay, he invited me to come back and study the music with him.

I did that in 1995, living with the Tounkara clan, playing with Djelimady's band--the Super Rail Band--and making the rounds of weddings, parties, baptisms, and every other place this most in-demand, griot guitarist went to play music. This fantastic musical adventure was the subject of my book In Griot Time: An American Guitarist in Mali (Temple University Press, 2000; Serpent's Tail, 2002). Since then, I've had the pleasure of returning to the Tounkara compound with Afropop Worldwide, and of welcoming the Super Rail Band to the United States not once but twice. In January of 2002, I went to London to see Djelimady receive the BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music for Africa. We even performed a song together in the ceremony, a real rite of passage for me.

This month, a longstanding dream of Djelimady's and mine is coming true. He is bringing an acoustic group to tour in the United States. This will be the first time American audiences will have to experience directly the acoustic guitar mastery with which Djelimady first seduced me nearly a decade ago. I've signed on as road manager for the tour--a first!--so I'll be at every show, hawking Djelimady's CDs and my book, and dealing with all the adventures that inevitably accompany a tour of this sort. I'll also be filing regular reports on the tour as an afropop.org exclusive.

…So the adventure begins. Click on the links below to read the four subsequent tour reports.

Second tour dispatch

Third tour dispatch

Fourth tour dispatch

Fifth tour dispatch


Contributed by: Banning Eyre