A year ago today, Mamady Keita passed away peacefully in Belgium at the age of 71. The Guinean drummer was a grand master of the deeply resonant djembe, for which Guinea is one of Africa’s most renowned centres. His mother had a djembe made for him when he was just seven years old, at which time he was also initiated as a djembefola (the Malinké word for “djembe player”). At 14, Sékou Touré, Guinea’s first president after independence, selected him as a candidate to create Le Ballet National Djoliba. He went from lead soloist of Ballet Djoliba in 1965 to its artistic director in 1979.
Following the president’s death, funding for the ballet dried up, and Mamady began to look abroad. In 1988 he moved to Belgium where he worked as a performer and teacher, later opening his first Tam Tam Mandingue percussion school in Brussels; centres can now be found in Europe, North America, and Asia. It’s partly thanks to his influence and desire to teach others and make the djembe more accessible that it can be heard more broadly in music worldwide today.
To mark his passing, Seckou Keita shared the following performance, saying:
“In tribute to the incredible Mamady Keita. My mentor, friend, spiritual father and source of inspiration…Never forgotten.”
Seckou Keita recently released his third album with the Welsh harpist Catrin Finch. Echo was a Featured Album of the Month on FR, which we reviewed here.
“…another masterpiece; a beautiful album from two artists operating at the height of their powers.”
Echo was released on 27th May and presented as a beautiful 40-page Digibook with sleeve notes written by journalist and writer Andy Morgan.
Order the album here: https://www.catrinfinchandseckoukeita.com/shop
Listen to Catrin and Seckou performing Tabadabang.
Track Notes on Tabadabang
Back in Seckou’s homeland in southern Senegal, the elders would sometimes gather to talk. If the discussion was important, and a child was standing there listening, they would ask him to go and fetch lo yiro from a relative’s house, a few miles away. The phrase means ‘the standing still stick’, because the child would be standing next to the elders like a stick. Off the child would go, scurrying through the dusty lanes and streets of Ziguinchor to fulfil the mission, without knowing what lo yiro actually was.
When he reached his first destination, this relative, an aunt perhaps, or an uncle, would say “Lo Yiro?! What did I do with it? Oh…I remember now. I lent it to so-and- so. He doesn’t live far from here. Go there and ask him for it.” So off he would go again but on reaching so-and-so’s house, he would get a similar response, and the same thing would happen at the next house and the next and the next. Sometimes, he would arrive looking so deadbeat and thirsty, that the kindly relative would offer him a glass of sweet bissap juice and some food and let him rest before continuing on his quest.
“Before you knew it, the day would have passed,” Seckou remembers. “By the time you returned home, empty-handed, the meeting would be over, and you would have had a day of walking and meeting family, with plenty of time to think differently.”
Tabadabang, means ‘go’ (ta) ‘to’ (ba) ‘a mysterious end’ (dabang) in Mandinka. Travel towards a goal unknown. On one level, it’s the equivalent of telling children
to “stop getting under my feet and go out to play.” As well as teaching a lesson about when to hang around and when to give the grown-ups the space they need, it also created a pretext for adventure, for developing street wisdom and for seeing people and places. On a deeper level, with its mysterious unknowable goal, it’s sense of a journey where the destination is less important than the trip itself and its circuitous route back to the place where everything began, Tabadabang is also a metaphor for life, the life that happens while you’re busy making plans. Or searching for lo yiro.
The lyrics say: Curiosity has created an opportunity. Hanging around at home for
too long has sent me galivanting all day! Galivanting all day has taught me something
