Were you classically trained in music theory or did you learn solely by playing?

I didn’t go to school or have classical training or theory. In Africa you pick up the instrument, and play along with your father; it’s in your blood. My father and grandfather wouldn’t use the name of notes to talk about a certain key or tonality, they would play with different names. In the 70’s and 80’s I started to use ‘do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do’ in French, or ‘ c d e f g a b c’ in English, to make sure that occidental musicians would understand what key we were playing in and vice-versa. Otherwise, the communication was more difficult.

Have you ever played an American banjo?

Yes, I had an American banjo once at my place, but now it is broken. I used to play with it a little. I received it as a gift from American friends. They gave me one of the oldest known American banjos, which is not like a modern banjo. It was made out of a gourd, so it was very similar to a Ngoni when I played it. Nowadays the Ngoni is a wood body, but the traditional Ngonis were made of a gourd. It is still made with cow-skin on top, but my elders would build banjos with calabash, a dried out fruit. That was a little more fragile, not as resistant to shock.

When you play your music in different parts of the world, do you observe different types of reactions from place to place?

Audiences are different all over the world. It doesn’t matter of age, or culture. Some are shy, some like to dance. As a musician it is your everyday job to try to sense what the audience is waiting for. After one or two songs you can tell if the mood is a party type crowd that want to dance, so you can play faster songs, or if it is a more calm audience. Each particular audience everywhere is different.

During his career, the American musician Bob Dylan was said to have used his music as a political vehicle for change. However, Bob Dylan himself said he was solely ‘a musician’. Do you see yourself as solely a ‘musician’, or do you have another goal for your music?

I definitely think I have a role as a musician – a voice. The musics and lyrics to my songs are often political. I have to denounce what these people do. They are bad presidents. If they are good you should say so also, but lately we have had very bad presidents and politicians in Mali, and Africa in general. People are corrupt and literally stealing- it’s authorized stealing- of money from the poor people. They drive in big cars and they have palaces. Their kids go everywhere in the world. They were not rich in the start, so where did they get that money? We have to speak out about these people and make sure they can’t do that anymore. It’s my role as a musician to do that. A couple of weeks ago in an old area of Bamako, three hundred houses were dismantled and demolished without even negotiating with the owners because a big hotel is going to be built there. They had no right. These houses were built for tens of thousands of dollars by poor people who put all their economies into that, and all of a sudden rich people, with the help of government obviously, destroyed them. If there were a good president and government it wouldn’t happen, but its happening, and it occurred in Mali just a few weeks ago. Music definitely becomes a vehicle to speak about this and denounce the bad things.

What do you feel music has the power to do?

For us Malians, music is actually the only power we have because we are poor people. We have no gas, no diamonds, no cash, nothing. The only thing we have left is the power of music, to sing it as loud as we can- to put lyrics that mean something; that’s it.

When you are creating music on stage and it reaches a point of great strength, that ‘groove’, how can you describe that feeling?

When that special moment happens, that state of grace, when everything is welded together and the groove is good, and you feel it in your heart and brain, you can forget about anything else. And the best thing is when even the audience feels it, when there’s this communion and it happens. It is the best feeling. You can forget about anything else. You can play on and on and everyday you would start over and over again.

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