Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux, one of West Africa's most famous dance bands, reunited last year to play shows in Europe and to celebrate Stern Music's release of a wonderful compilation of their early, formative music from the band's residency at the Motel de Bamako.
Rewind back to the early 1970s, when the Rail Band de Bamako was holding court in Mali's capital. The band was performing modernised versions of the Manding classical traditions and was at the forefront of modern Malian music. Salif Keita, now an African superstar, was just a scrawny youth but he was the Rail Band's top singer, although he yearned to break out of the classical mode and play all kinds of music.
Keita told me many years ago that he had run away from his noble upbringing and, after finding out that his eyes were not good enough for him to train as a teacher, started writing songs and playing his guitar in the local markets. He began singing with the Rail Band, but always felt restricted in what he felt he could accomplish. In 1973, he got an offer to join the recently-formed Ambassadeurs and he jumped ship (interestingly, one of his replacements was the kora player and singer Mory Kante, who, like Keita, would go on to international success).
Les Ambassadeurs were actually set up by a high-ranking member of Mali's military junta to perform for visiting VIPs. He gave the band its diplomatic title because the band members came from various countries in West Africa. To Malian saxophonist Moussa Sissoko and trumpeter Kabine Traore, he added the Senegalese singer Ousmane Dia of the legendary Star Band de Dakar and the band's musical arranger and master guitarist Kante Manfila. Later balafon (xylophone) master Keletigui Diabate, and guitarists Ousmane Kouyate and Amadou Bagayoko (now part of the hugely successful duo Amadou & Mariam). Kouyate has been Keita's guitarist for most of his career.
As with so many African bands from the golden era of the late 1960s and into the 1970s, Les Ambassadeurs played everything and anything, from the classical Manding traditions to Afro-Cuban, jazz, blues, pop and French songs. They also performed their own songs (Keita says he learned many of his songwriting skills from this period).
The 2-CD compilation, lovingly put together by Robert Urbanus, features many of the band's early 7-inch singles. CD 1 features many of the early songs on which Keita takes his singing to a new level, such as the soaring praise song Djandio and on the upbeat organ-driven Wara. The other great singer in the band Ousmane Dia features on CD 2; he sounds terrific on the sweet charanga-influenced Fatema and on the stirring Ray M'Bote. Bandleader Manfile sings the band's anthem on Ambassadeur. The compilation finishes with two recordings of broadcasts by the band on Radio Mali.
Political instability in Mali drove the band to start from scratch as Les Ambassadeurs Internationaux in the Cote d'Ivoire, which had the studios and facilities that would enable the band to blaze a trail in developing West African popular music.
But before they left Mali, Les Ambassadeurs laid down some great tracks, many of which are on this fabulous collection from one of West Africa's greatest bands. Absolutely essential.
Another album of interesting Malian music dropped onto the World Beat desk recently: Music In Exile by Songhoy Blues (Atlantic). This is the debut album of four Bamako University graduates, Gao, Umar and Aliou Toure, and Nat Dembele. Due to the civil strife in Northern Mali where the musicians' Songhoy tribe lives, the four had to relocate to Bamako and there they formed a band, and determined to keep their Songhoy traditions alive.
If you're familiar with the music of the late Ali Farka Toure and his distinctive Northern Malian guitar styles, you may well find this album intriguing, as Songhoy Blues have taken his sound and further refined and extended it.
It's a great first effort; some of the tracks are rousing stompers, like the opener Soubour and Al Hassidi Terei, while others like Sekou Oumarou have the same rolling rhythms and desert spaciness of Tinariwen. A band to watch out for.
This columnist can be contacted at clewley.john@gmail.com
