Es una muy grata sorpresa la calidad de la música de África Occidental y Marruecos y me pareció muy interesante conocer los instrumentos musicales que utilizan y la gran tradición de sus músicos. La presentación incluye 6 fragmentos musicales.

1. West Africa
Contemporary Music
"Music may achieve the highest of all missions: she may be a bond
between nations, races, and states, who are strangers in many ways;
she may unite what is disunited and bring peace to what is hostile."
Dr. Max Bendiner
Fantasie
Toumani Diabate

2. African Music
Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical
traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a distinct history from
sub-Saharan African music traditions.
North Africa is the seat of the Mediterranean culture, including ancient Egypt and
Carthage, civilizations with strong ties to the ancient Near East and which have
heavily influenced the ancient Greek and Roman cultures. North Africa was later
conquered by the Arabs, who established the region as the Maghreb of the Arab
world.
The musical genres of the Nile Valley and the Horn of Africa, have close ties with
Middle Eastern music.
Eastern Africa and the islands of the Indic Ocean, have received some influences
from the Arabic, Indian, Indonesian and Polynesian music. However, the original
musical traditions are based on the culture of the sub-saharan tribes speaking the
Níger and Congo indigenous languages.

3. Southern, Central and West Africa are similarly in the broad Sub-Saharan musical
tradition, but draw their ancillary influences primarily from Western Europe and
North America.
North Africa
The music and dance forms of the
African diaspora include African
Nilo
American music and many Caribbean Valley
and Latin American genres, such as Western Africa Horn of
samba, rumba, salsa, soca, calypso Africa
and zouk, which were founded to Central
varying degrees on the music of Africa
Eastern
enslaved Africans, who with his Africa
traditional innate ability for dancing
and playing musical instruments, Southern
strongly influenced popular music of Africa
many countries of the world.

4. Contemporary West Africa & Morocco
Musicians
Majid Bekkas Juldeh Camara
Toumani Diabate
Foday Musa Suso Muhamadou Salieu Suso

5. String Musical Instruments of Morocco
The Oud is one stringed
instrument characterized by
a round-backed body with
either one or three holes,
and a headstock that is
bent back from the neck.
Guembri
Three strings bass
Bajo con 3 cuerdas

6. String Musical Instruments of West Africa
Especially popular in Senegal, Gambia and Mali
The Kora is a harp built from a large calabash
cut in half and covered with cow skin to make
a resonator with a long hardwood neck. The
skin is supported by two handles that run
under it, and it supports a notched double
free-standing bridge. Traditional koras feature
21 strings, eleven played by the left hand and
ten by the right.
Kora
The Riti is a single-string fiddle of Senegal
and Gambia. It is played to accompany
praise singing and acrobatic dancing, usually
together with several calabashes, which are
used as percussion instruments.
Riti

7. Majid Bekkas, Oud and Guembri virtuoso, guitar professor and singer, has long
been a star in his home country Morocco.
Over the last few years, he has found his way into the European jazz scene
through his collaborations with Archie Shepp, Louis Sclavis, Flavio Boltro and
Klaus Doldinger.
Abdelmajid Bekkas was born and still lives in Salé, Morocco. He studied
classical guitar and oud at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in
Rabat and learnt Gnawa music through the teachings of the master Ba
Houmane.
Gnawa appeared in the 16th century. During the conquest of Sudan, Ahmed El
Mansour Dahbi set up the first trading and cultural links between Timbuktu,
near Zagora where Bekkas comes from, and Marrakech.
Chabkrou
Majid Bekkas

8. The secular music is still considered the "healer of souls" from Essaouira to
Marrakech, easily understandable when you listen to the spellbinding sound of
Bekkas voice, guembri and guitar. Like a watermark, the mystery of Africa can be
felt in the background, alongside the blues.
Gnawa s intact purity is the essence of the authenticity. By claiming to be part of
Africa, the mother of the blues and its numerous offspring such as funk, Bekkas is
placing Gnawa in its primary dimension. By opening the spectrum, including
elements of contemporary western music, Bekkas attains a universal status that is
nurtured by the path he travelled.
These include: jazz, alongside pioneers such as Peter Brötzmann, Archie Shepp,
Flavio Boltro, Louis Sclavis.
Bekkas openness and ability to balance modernism and memory with a rare talent
that knews no compromise, frees the music from the stamp of time. The memory
is that of pain and wisdom, of songs that come from the slaves of Africa.

9. Juldeh Camara
Born in 1966 in Basse, West Africa, Juldeh Camara is a
Gambian griot and master musician.
A griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer,
poet and musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition.
His blind father received the gift of music from forest spirits who took the use of his
eyes in return. Playing the Riti, a one- stringed fiddle, he participated as a griot in
traditional Fula society.
Camara has been recognized as the leading Riti player in the world.
Camara has played with Ifang Bondi, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Batanai Marimba,
Knut Reiersrud, kora player Seckou Keita and Tunde Jegede's African Classical
Ensemble, where in 2009 he performed at St. Denis Cathedral in Paris which included
Oumou Sangare, Toumani Diabate, Kasse Mady Diabate, Sambou Susso and the
Brodsky Quartet.
More recently he has established a successful partnership with the famous rock guitar
player Justin Adams, releasing their collaborative albums "Soul Science",
"Tell No Lies" in May 2009 and "The Trance Sessions" EP in February 2010.
Nightwalk
Juldeh Camara & Justin Adams

10. Toumani Diabaté was born in Mali, August 10, 1965. He is a master kora player.
In addition to performing the traditional music of Mali, he has also been involved in
cross-cultural collaborations with flamenco, blues, jazz, and other international styles.
He has collaborated with flamenco group Ketama, forming a combined group known
as Songhai and releasing two recordings.
Diabaté comes from a long family tradition of kora players including his father Sidiki
Diabaté, who recorded the first ever kora album in 1970.
His family's oral tradition tells of 71 generations of musicians preceding him in a
patrilineal line. His cousin Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora player to come from
a Griot family.
Kala Djula
Toumani Diabate & Ali Farka Toure

11. In September 2005, he released the album “In the Heart of the Moon”, for which he
collaborated with Ali Farka Touré.
The album went on to win the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Traditional World Music
Album.
On July 25, 2006 he released the album “Boulevard de l'Indépendance”, recorded
with his Symmetric Orchestra.
The Symmetric Orchestra led by Toumani Diabaté is composed of musicians (mostly
griots) from the across the old Mande Empire of west Africa, who play a mix of
traditional instruments including the kora, djembe, balafon and bolombatto, as well as
modern ones like the guitar and electronic keyboard.

12. Foday Musa Suso, was born in Sarre Hamadi Village, Wuli District, in the Upper
River Division of eastern Gambia.
Foday is a musician and composer. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group,
and is a griot, oral historian and musician of the Mandingo people who live in
several west African nations. Suso is a direct descendent of Jali Madi Wlen Suso,
the griot who invented the kora over four centuries ago.
He spent his childhood in a traditional Gambian village, in a household filled with
kora music. Though his father was a master kora player, in griot tradition a father
does not teach his own children the instrument.
Ocean Wave
Foday Musa Suso & Jack DeJohnette

13. When Foday was 9, his father sent him to live with master kora teacher Sekou
Suso in the village of Pasamasi, Wuli District. He trained with Sekou Suso until the
age of 18. Suso's primary instrument is the kora, but he also plays the gravikord
and several other instruments.
Suso emigrated to Chicago in 1977, being one of the first jalis to relocate to North
America. Once in Chicago, he formed the Mandingo Griot Society, which played
fusion music around the world.
He has performed with Philip Glass, Bill Laswell, Pharoah Sanders, Jack
DeJohnette, Ginger Baker, Paul Simon and the Kronos Quartet. He has
contributed to music for the Olympic Games in 1984 and 2004.
His electrified kora can also be heard on several tracks on Herbie Hancock's 1984
electro-funk album Sound-System.
The following year, Suso and Hancock came out with another album, “Village Life”,
that consists entirely of duets between them, Hancock on synthesizer and Suso on
kora, talking drums, and vocals.

14. Muhamadou Salieu Suso, was born into a family of
farmers and traditional Gambian musicians/historians
that extends back nearly 1,000 years.
He was trained to play the 21 stringed Kora (West
African Harp) beginning at age 8 by his father,
renowned Kora player Alhaji Musa Makang Suso.
He is a descendent of JaliMady Wulayn Suso, the
inventor of the Kora.
Suso graduated from high school in The Gambia, West Africa. Speaks English
fluently and Mandingo, Fula, Wolof, Sarahulay and some German.
Before settling in the United States in 1989, Suso performed widely throughout
Africa and Europe. Salieu Suso is the leader of the “Jaliya Kafo Extended Family
Music Ensemble”, and is a leader in the nation’s rapidly growing African music
scene. Suso actively freelances with other groups
Sutukung
Mohamadou Salieu Suso

15. E N D
Other Biographies at :
www.slideshare.net/aavmvazquez AVM 08.09.2012