Youssouf Komara World Music Festival Visions

This is a “folk art” rough draft at the first glimmer stage of Youssouf’s visions. We will be posting pictures and information about other world music makers as we roll along. Please let me know if you have any ideas about all of this.

Olde@milwaukeerenaissance.com

Youssouf Komara Co-Host of Timbuktu Milwaukee

Milwaukee would be the first in the United States to host World Music Festival, where artists would come from all over the world for a 4 day music concert, with African traditional dance called “ballet” (in Guinea “ballet Africain de Guinee”), e.g. Doudo N’Diane Rose, Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal, all from Senegal; Papa Wemba and Koffi Olomide, from Congo; Thomas M’Fumo. Africando from Senegal; Bembeya Jazz de Guinee;

If you would like to help make this become a reality, e-mail Youssouf Komara at ykomara@hotmail.com or Olde@milwaukeerenaissance.com.

Doudou N’Diaye Rose

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Doudou N’Diaye Rose (b. Dakar, Senegal, 1928) is the most famous Senegalese drummer, and one of the most renowned African musicians of the 20th century. He specializes in the traditional drum called sabar, although he also plays many other types of drum such as saourouba, assicot, bougarabou, meung meung, lamb, n’der, gorom babass, and khine.

He is the founder and chief drum major of the Drummers of West Africa (all members of his family), with which he also performs. He also leads an all-female drum group called Les Rosettes, composed entirely of his own daughters and granddaughters.

N’Diaye Rose is purported to have developed 500 new rhythms, and, indeed, his music is quite complex, featuring ever-changing rhythmic structures which he conducts with his trademark vigorous style.[1] He has also invented new types of drum.

He has performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Rolling Stones, and Peter Gabriel.

Baaba Maal
Photo from Official Web Site http://www.baabamaal.tv/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baaba Maal is a Senegalese singer and guitarist born in Podor, on the Senegal River. His father was a fieldhand and, as such, Baaba Maal was expected to become a fieldhand as well. However, Baaba Maal devoted himself to learning music from his mother and from his school’s headmaster. He went on to study music at the university in Dakar before leaving for postgraduate studies on a scholarship at Beaux-Arts in Paris. He has become quite famous in Africa. He is the most internationally famous musician from Senegal, except perhaps Yossou N’Dour. Baaba is also the foremost promoter of the traditions of the Pulaar speaking peoples who live on either side of the Senegal River in the ancient Senegalese kingdom of Futa Tooro

Papa Wemba
Photo and Prose from African Musical Encylopedia

Papa Wemba, often called the King of Rhumba Rock, was born in Kasai, Zaire. Shungu Wembadio Pene Kikumba first made his mark in 1970 in Kinshasa, where he was a singer, composer, and co-founder of the great youth group Zaiko Langa Langa. In 1974 he left to form his own band, Isife Lokole, and then in ‘76 began Viva La Musica.
Hoping to reach a wider audience he ended up in Paris in the early ‘80s, bringing with him the entire line-up of Viva La Musica. Wemba’s musical vision went beyond the capabilities of his seasoned Zairen rhumba rockers as he began to experiment with a wide range of eclectic sounds.

Wemba’s quite a stylish fellow, a sapeur, an aficionado of fashionable, well-designed clothing. His trendy suits with big jacket, and baggy, though tailored pants, are a strange mix of Africa, Paris, and the American zoot suit. A Soukous show is always a fashion event, and Wemba is a man of great style and taste.

Youssou N’Dour
Photo from Official Web Site http://www.youssou.com/

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background

Beginning in the mid-1970s the resulting mix was modernized with a gloss of more complex indigenous Senegalese dance rhythms, roomy and melodic guitar and saxophone solos, chattering talking-drum soliloquies and, on occasion, Sufi-inspired Muslim religious chant. This created a new music which was at turns nostalgic, restrained and stately, or celebratory, explosively syncopated and indescribably funky. Younger Senegalese musicians steeped in Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, James Brown, and the whole range of American jazz, soul, and rock music, which Senegal’s cosmopolitan capital, Dakar, had enthusiastically absorbed, were rediscovering their heritage and seeking out traditional performers, particularly singers and talking drummers, to join their bands. (The griots—musicians, praise-singers and storyteller-historians—comprise a distinct hereditary caste in Wolof society and throughout West Africa.) As it emerged from this period of fruitful musical turbulence, mbalax would eventually find in Youssou N’Dour the performer who has arguably had more to do with its shaping than any other individual.

Life
He began performing at the age of 12. Within a couple of years he was performing regularly with the Star Band, Dakar’s most popular group in the early 1970s. Several members of the Star Band joined Orchestre Baobab about that time.

In 1979, he formed his own ensemble, the Etoile de Dakar. His early work with Etoile de Dakar was in the typical Latin style popular all over Africa during that time, but in the 1980s he developed a unique sound when he started his current group, Super Etoile de Dakar featuring Jimi Mbaye on guitar, bassist Habib Faye, and tama (talking drum) player Assane Thiam.

Youssou N’Dour is one of the most celebrated African musicians in history. A renowned singer, songwriter, and composer, Youssou’s mix of traditional Senegalese mbalax with eclectic influences ranging from Cuban samba to hip hop, jazz, and soul has won him an international fan base of millions. In the West, Youssou has collaborated with musicians Peter Gabriel, Sting, Neneh Cherry, Wyclef Jean, Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman, Branford Marsalis, and others. In Senegal, Youssou is a powerful cultural icon actively involved in social issues.

He is endowed with remarkable range and poise, a composer, bandleader, and producer with a prodigious musical intelligence. The New York Times most recently described his voice as an “arresting tenor, a supple weapon deployed with prophetic authority”. N’Dour absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering this through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside Senegalese culture.

In July 1993, an African opera composed by N’Dour premiered at the Paris Opera. He wrote and performed the official anthem of the 1998 FIFA World Cup with Axelle Red “Le Couer des Grands”.

N’Dour’s major asset is that is strongly grounded in his culture. Even if he chooses to explore elsewhere, his roots are well established. Some have gone so far as describing him as the African Artist of the Century (Folk Roots magazine). He has toured internationally for almost 30 years. He won his first American Grammy Award (best contemporary world music album) for his CD Egypt in 2005.

His success lies in his constant work, and the honesty and respect he brings to his work, his people and his family. However, his personal life is kept private. Youssou works constantly, perfecting his art and opening it up to other cultures. In recent years, he has opened his own recording studio, Xippi, as well as his own record label, Jololi.

N’Dour has associated himself with several social and political issues. In 1985, he organized a concert for the release of Nelson Mandela. He was a featured performer in the 1988 worldwide Amnesty International Human Rights Now! Tour and worked with the United Nations and UNICEF. He also started Project Joko to open internet cafés in Africa and to connect Senegalese communities around the world. He performed at three of the Live 8 concerts (in Live 8 concert, London, Live 8 concert, Paris and at the Live 8 concert, Eden Project in Cornwall) on 2 July, 2005, with Dido.

Thomas Mapfumo “The Lion of Zimbabwe”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Mapfumo is a Zimbabwean musician known as “The Lion of Zimbabwe” for his immense popularity and for the political influence he wields through his music.

Thomas Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Marondera, a village south of Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia. He lived a traditional, rural Shona lifestyle until the age of ten, when his family moved to the Salisbury township of Mbare. He joined his first band, the Zutu Brothers (Encyclopædia Britannica says it was the Cyclones), as a singer at the age of 16. From then he was always in one band or another, sometimes doing odd jobs on the side as well, including chicken farming. Hence the name of his 1972 band, the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band.

He played mostly covers of American rock and soul tunes, such as Otis Redding or Elvis Presley, until he was in the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band. There he introduced the innovation of adapting traditional Shona music to modern rock instrumentation.

He worked with guitarist Joshua Dube (Leopard Man’s Africa Music Guide says Jonah Sithole) to transcribe the sounds of the chief instrument of traditional Shona music, the mbira, or thumb piano, to the electric guitar. He also started singing primarily in the Shona language, rather than in English, and his music became much more political.

Just the fact that he was drawing on the native musical tradition and singing in his native language was a political statement. At that time Rhodesia was ruled by a white minority which denigrated the native black population and culture. But more than that, his lyrics became overtly political, supporting the revolution that was developing in the rural areas, what Mapfumo calls “the communal lands”. He called his new style of music chimurenga. In Shona it means “struggle”, and was the name of a previous revolutionary movement in the late nineteenth century. His songs openly called for the violent overthrow of the government, with lyrics like “Mothers, send your sons to war.” But since the white government didn’t understand Shona, they didn’t realize how radical it was.

Eventually they caught on, though. The climax came with a song called “Hokoyo!”, which means “Watch out!” The government banned the record from the state-controlled radio and threw him into a prison camp without charges in 1979. But they couldn’t stop his records from being played in discos or on radio they didn’t control, like the Voice of Mozambique. Large demonstrations in protest of his arrest and an inability to trump up charges against him forced the government to release him after three months.

Free elections were held in 1980 and a new government was installed. Mapfumo performed at a celebratory concert which also featured Bob Marley.

The PRI-syndicated radio program Afropop ran a feature on Thomas Mapfumo in late 1988/early 1989. Host Georges Collinet describes Mapfumo as living in the low-density suburbs with his wife, who worked at a law office in downtown Harare, and his two children - a boy and a girl. And he drove a blue Ford with fake leopard-skin seat covers.

Most of his songs were still political, dealing with poverty and other social issues. Mapfumo comments on the fact that he doesn’t sing many love songs: “All you need if you wanna get into the bedroom… You’ve got a wife. You do it. You don’t have to sing a song about it.” Collinet also observes that Mapfumo can’t sing anything he wants : “Clearly he can’t sing ‘Down with President Mugabe’ - but he wouldn’t want to. He supports the present government.” However, that would soon change.

Mapfumo released the album Corruption in 1989. It criticized Mugabe and his government, with which Mapfumo was becoming more and more disillusioned. Mugabe wasn’t happy with Mapfumo, either, and Mapfumo became the target of government harassment. Mapfumo was accused of being involved with a stolen-car ring. Things got uncomfortable enough that Mapfumo moved to Oregon in the late 1990s, where he lives now.

Thomas Mapfumo tours internationally, and still sings and speaks out about the problems of Zimbabwe. His chimurenga style of music influenced a new generation of Zimbabwean musicians, including the Bhundu Boys and Stella Chiweshe.

 Koffi Olomide

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antoine Koffi Olomide (born August 13, 1958), is a Congolese soukous singer, producer, and composer.

Born in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo to a Congolese father and Ghanaian mother, Koffi grew up in Kinshasa.
He went to France to study where he earned a bachelors degree in economics and a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Paris. While in Paris, he began playing the guitar and writing songs. On his return to Congo he was a member of Viva la Musica, Papa Wemba’s band. Koffi repopularized the slower style of soukous, which had fallen out of fashion. He dubbed this style Tcha Tcho, and it gained popularity outside Congo. Koffi’s music can be quite controversial, taking on current events and topics considered taboo in some conservative societies. He has also participated in the salsa music project Africando.

Planning and Actions to Take