A little West Africa comes to Western Rhode Island

Who says Rhode Island doesn’t have any culture? Rhode Islanders know how to eat, lay at the beach, catch wind and waves alike and root on incredibly good athletic teams however, we don’t really know squat when it comes to music. Aside from our folk festival and the Station fire, there’s not much going on in the musical world of the Ocean State. Last night, the world came to us as Master Kora player Toumani Diabate and his Orchestra swept through the University of Rhode Island.
Toumani, best known in the western world for his album with Taj Mahal, is fusing traditional West African music (Kora, Balophone, Djembe) with modern instruments (Electric bass and guitar, drumkit) and it is delightful. Everyone in the packed house was clapping, dancing or tapping their feet to his bands infectous ostinato-laden grooves.

Diabate opened the show with a couple oldies, try 500 year oldies, that got the place a shaking before settling down into some softer songs that highlighted each instrument on its own (a la many jazz solos). Its incredible to think how someone so steeped in tradition (he is a 71st generation Kora player in his family, how do you like them apples?) can still bring new life to his art and transfer it effortlessly to even the youngest members of the student body.

The only non-traditionally African song of the night came with a nice tease of Dave Brubek’s “Take Five” during a Balophone solo to which Diabate scolded from behind his Kora, “No No, play something they don’t know”. Well, that may have been the only melody I recognized the whole night but I assure you with music as the world’s greatest communicator, I knew excactly where they were coming from.