The Tour Begins

October 27, 2002

Malian guitarist Djelimady Tounkara made his first U.S. tour this fall as the head of his own acoustic group. Banning Eyre road managed the tour. This is the second installment of Banning's account of the experience.

Hear Djelimady Tounkara, Bamba Dembele and Banning Eyre on KEXP, Seattle

Arrival!
Djelimady Tounkara and his five musicians flew into Oakland Airport on October 22 straight from Paris, where they'd spent four hours after flying from Bamako. After nearly 24-hours of travel, they were more than a little bleary and pleased to arrive at a destination. For three of the musicians--Fode Sacko (ngoni), Samba Diabaté (rhythm guitar), and Mariam Tounkara (vocals)--the ride into San Francisco was their first look at the U.S.A. For Fode and Mariam, who is Djelimady's daughter, it was the first time out of Africa. Awe would have to wait, though. Sleep came first.

With all the world music (and other arts) tour problems coming up this season, thanks to new immigration procedures and rules, the mere arrival of a musical group from an Islamic country was something to celebrate. But this was an especially sweet moment for me, because this tour marks the first chance Americans have had to see Djelimady Tounkara play acoustic guitar. That was the experience that led me to go and live in Mali and study with Djelimady. The man's technique and power of expression was a revelation, and without taking anything away from his sterling electric guitar performances with the Super Rail Band, I had found guitar nirvana in his acoustic work. As much as anything, this is why I signed on as road manager for the current tour.

October 23 was a rest day, and the band took a walk from their downtown San Francisco hotel, the Maxwell, into Chinatown to sample their favorite non-African food. Chicken, duck, and white rice hit the spot. The elderly Chinese restaurant proprietor had to step down the street to fill the order, and he came back with a whole duck in a plastic bag, whisked into the kitchen, and quickly sliced it up into seven to-go packages.

San Francisco's hills proved a little much for Mariam, so we left her with Samba Diabaté in a small, friendly market, and returned for them once we had duck in hand. Djelimady told me that Mariam had been initially afraid to come to the United States. "When you see America on the television in Mali now," he told me, "it's frightening. All we see is violence, and George Bush talking about war." He said it's a paradox: America looks scary, but when you arrive here, everyone is incredibly nice. I told him it's rather like the paradox Americans find when they visit places like Mali. The warm, welcoming reality is a far cry from the news of war, disease, and famine.

First Gig

The band gathered in Djelimady's room on the 11th floor of the Maxwell for a rehearsal and briskly swept through many of the songs on his wonderful acoustic album, Sigui. I didn't have to wait long to be invited to join in. Djelimady and Bamba, the band's artistic manager, gave me no choice. The question was only: Which songs are you going play on?

Then came the question of instruments. For all his grandeur as an acoustic guitarist, Djelimady does not own a proper performance instrument. When he sent a fax saying that he wasn't planning to bring any guitar at all, the tour organizers wrote back insisting that he at least bring something to start with. So, the group arrived with two acoustic guitars:

1) A Carver guitar that British producer and musician friend Ben Mandelson gave him in London last January. Djelimady's verdict: pretty guitar, but only okay sounding, and the neck reacts violently to the weather, warping one way when it's warm and the other when it's cold.

2) A Fender guitar that Bonnie Raitt gave to Djelimady's friend Barou Diallo in Mali in 2000. Barou loaned it to Djelimady for this tour. The guitar plays nicely, but has no cutaway so it's hard to get up to high lead lines. Also, the pickup jack needs attention; the cord dangles loosely out of it.

Bottom line: neither of these instruments is a performance instrument worthy of the grand musician who brought them here. Djelimady told me that that he would like to buy a really good acoustic guitar, but there has never been that kind of money lying around. "I have to think of my family," he said. "At the end of the Rail Band tour, I could have spent all my money on that, but it would have made a lot of trouble back home." For the moment, the solution was obvious. Djelimady would play my Larivee, a very fine hand-made instrument. I would sit in with the Fender, and Samba would play the Carver.

The first show of the tour was an appearance at the 20th San Francisco Jazz Festival. In a big, echoey, downtown hall called Regency, Djelimady's group opened for Charlie Hunter and Idris Muhammad. Hunter is an innovative, young player who works with an 8-string, combination electric guitar and bass. He picks out bass lines with his thumb and chords and melodies with his nimble fingers. Muhammad is a veteran jazz percussionist who, among other distinctions, played with John Coltrane in the 1960s. Both musicians immediately hit it off with Djelimady, and Hunter, a fan of Malian music, spoke enough French to warm up the Malian musicians.

Foreseeing this, Bay Area guitarist Henry Kaiser had arranged for an electric guitar to be present so that Djelimady could sit in with the Hunter and Muhammed. Djelimady's first U.S. acoustic performance was a smash hit. The crowd mostly consisted of Hunter loyalists. Hunter began his career in San Francisco, but has been living in New York recently. It quickly became clear that these jazz fans easily saw what Djelimady has always said: Manding music and jazz--it's the same thing. When Djelimady took to his feet and began peeling off fast, soulful licks from the edge of the stage, the audience roared. The feeling in the room was electric. At the end of the 50-minute set, Bamba introduced each of the players, and the sustained applause left no doubt that they had touched a deep place in peoples' hearts, whatever they may have known about Manding music when they walked through the door.

During Hunter's set, Djelimady sat at stage left, transfixed by the merging bass and lead lines coming from Hunter's two, deft hands, and by the freeflowing stream of rhythm and harmony from this impressive duo. At the end of the set, Hunter called Djelimady on stage. Djelimady was ready with Henry Kaiser's guitar and a fabulous, free flowing jam ensued, veering inevitably toward high-octane, African salsa. Always pleased to jam with a master musician, Djelimady left the hall with a glow, and the tour was christened.

Heading North

We flew to Seattle the next day, and the tour producer Alison Loerke met us at the airport with the shocking news of Senator Paul Wellstone's sudden death in a plane crash. Djelimady and Bamba are both keen to understand the nature of American politics. I had spoken to Djelimady about Wellstone because this tour will be in Minneapolis--where Wellstone was in a very tight race--on election night. The weight of this new development was difficult to convey, but the show had to go on.

Two young women from Evergreen College met us in a van to drive some 60 miles to Olympia. They immediately drew attention for their pierced ears, eyebrows, lips, and even tongue. "If you did that in Mali," said young Fode Sacko, "They would lock you up. They would think you'd gone crazy. Doesn't that hurt?" he asked one of the young women.

"A little," she replied, "But I like it."

I could not explain this phenomenon to Fode's satisfaction. Later he told me, "The Americans are the most intelligent, most advanced people, but they can also be the most savage."

The group played two shows at Evergreen, both in a 250-seat theatre on the campus. The venue had excellent sound, a talented, friendly and patient staff, a comfortable green room well stocked with food and drink. By the second night, the place was starting to feel like home. Each show ran two sets, giving the group time to stretch out on traditional numbers and to bring in material beyond the Sigui CD. Both shows were excellent and very well received, but the second night, with the band rested and comfortable, was downright exemplary. Bamba tweaked the song line up from the first night, and suddenly, the show had a near perfect flow. Djelimady revived an old Rail Band song, "Sada Dialo," near the end of the second set, and the band's signature Latin-Manding swing transferred onto acoustic instruments was pure magic.

I then joined Djelimady, Fode, and Samba for an extended jam on the traditional Manding song, "Keme Burema," and it was a peak experience. At one point, Djelimady fixed his gaze on me, and we locked our lines so tightly that I could feel a kind of musical wind rushing over me as we sped ahead. This was not just playing nicely together and enjoying ourselves. Djelimady's stare had a kind of seriousness about it that absolutely intoxicated me, and apparently much of the audience, because although the house wasn't full, it fairly roared afterwards.

They called for an encore, and the whole band came up to deliver a rendition of the Bamako wedding standard, "Diaoura." It felt like the high point of a wedding party, and people left genuinely uplifted. The group had found its surest footing yet. Afterwards, everyone went to a party at the home of one of the organizers. All the restaurants were closed, so they whipped up a quick grilled chicken and rice meal, while the band took in a '70s Dirty Harry film in the livingroom and a good deal of humorous multi-lingual conversation went around. Upon our leaving, Bamba delivered a heartfelt bit of griot like praise for Chris Yates, the man who invited the group to Olympia, his staff, the town, and in the end, all of America. "Ever since we first started coming here around 1990," he said, "we've found in America friendship, agreement, acceptance, and even love."

And the show goes on…Click on the links below to read Banning's other tour dispatches.

First tour dispatch

Third tour dispatch

Fourth tour dispatch

Fifth tour dispatch







Contributed by: Banning Eyre