Born in the Malian capital, Bamako, in 1965, Moussa Toumani Diabaté is descended from a long line of griots. Toumani, the son of Nama Koïta and Sidiki Diabaté (crowned king of the kora at the FESPAC festival in Lagos in 1977), started playing the kora at the tender age of five, mentored by his father and his grandfather, Amadou Bansang. Toumani went on to attend the French school in Bamako, mastering the kora’s 21 strings in his spare time at home while listening to his family’s extensive record collection which included albums by the Rail Band and Les Ambassadeurs du Motel as well as international music legends such as Otis Redding, Elvis Presley and James Brown.

In 1978, Toumani took part in Mali’s Cultural and Artistic Biennale, organised in the Koulikoro region (70 km from Bamako), for the first time and his performance there earned him second prize. The budding musician also took part in the next two Biennales (1980 and 1982), competing in the Bamako regional section. And it was at this moment that he decided to devote his life exclusively to music.

Toumani headed off to Europe for the first time in 1984 to perform with the Ensemble Djoliba, a percussive ensemble featuring eighteen musicians conducted by Tamba Dembélé. A hectic round of concerts, tours and collaborations ensued, taking Toumani around the world three times over. On his return to Bamako, Toumani enrolled at the INA (the National Institute for the Arts), where he was both a pupil and a teacher, taking singing lessons and passing on the art of kora-playing.

In 1988, Toumani teamed up with the Spanish flamenco/pop fusion group Ketama, playing a "Diarabi" (traditional Mandingo piece) with them. Two albums resulted from this project: "Songhaï 1" (1988) and a sequel, "Songhaï 2" (1990). Toumani says that when his father, the great Sidiki Diabaté, listened to the tracks on his son’s first Gypsy-Mandingo album tears came to his eyes. The album also brought tears to offended traditionalists’ eyes when they heard "what Toumani had done to the kora." Undeterred by criticism, Toumani pursued his quest to open the traditional instrument up to new musical horizons, elaborating all kinds of different fusion sounds. The only condition he imposed was that nothing should be changed in the essential structure of the kora and its 21 strings.

Toumani, who became a sort of roving international ambassador for the kora, went on to perform an acclaimed concert in Japan in 1991, sending shockwaves through the local music scene. Indeed, he earned his place in music history as the first musician to perform a kora concert there. Later that same year, the Malian virtuoso recorded the groundbreaking "Shake the Wall World", an album featuring an extended cast of 52 Japanese and American musicians. The album proved to be a huge hit, ranking as the best-selling world album in Japan in 1991/1992.

Maintaining his busy recording schedule, Toumani went on to record a whole string of albums, each of them different from the last. These included "Djélika" (recorded with Peter Gabriel, Sting, Brian Yamakhossi and musicians from the four corners of the world) in 1993, "Kulandjan" (with the internationally acclaimed bluesman Taj Mahal) in 1999 and "Malicool" (with trombonist Roswell Rudds) in 2002.

Yet throughout his eclectic collaborations and his quest for new fusion sounds, Toumani felt the pull of tradition. And the 71st generation of the Diabaté griot clan eventually felt the need to go back to a more traditional style of music. Teaming up with his Malian alter ego, Ballaké Sissoko, Toumani paid tribute to his father on his 1999 album "Nouvelles cordes anciennes" (New Old Strings). The two modern kora-players thus acknowledged the influence of their respective griot fathers, Sidiki Diabaté and Djélimady Sissoko, who had teamed up as a double act to record a joint album, "Cordes anciennes" (Old Strings), in the 1970s.

In 2005, Toumani went on to team up as part of another musical double act, going into the studio with legendary Malian guitar hero Ali Farka Touré to make "In the Heart of the Moon." This internationally acclaimed album was recorded at the Hôtel Mandé in Bamako in a single session. The unusual fusion of the kora, the ultimate Mandingo instrument, and Ali Farka Touré’s virtuoso guitar-playing, won the pair a prestigious Grammy Award in the world music category in 2006, just before Farka Touré’s death in March of that year.

Later that same year, Toumani went on to record another groundbreaking album, "Boulevard de l’Indépendance", with his pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, reworking ancient traditional pieces from the Mandingo empire. These days, when they are not off somewhere touring the world, Toumani and his Symmetric Orchestra play at the Hogon, a popular club in downtown Bamako, on Friday nights. Concerts often kick off at one in the morning and go right through the night, confirming Toumani Diabaté’s unpredictable nature and the fact that this gifted musician appears to have his own special relationship to time.

June 2007