1970s Malian orchestras: Radio Nationale du Mali recordings (?)


My primary motivation for maintaining this blog is to transform the spiritual desolation of twenty years of obsessive music collecting into an opportunity to invest more time and careful listening into specific musical treasures.  Over the last ten years I have divested myself of tens of thousands of CDs, thousands of cassettes, and a few hundred LPs.  It has been liberating, freeing up time and mental space to practice instead of collect music.

More than hunting and hoarding music, what always brought me the greatest satisfaction was spending an afternoon, an evening, all night, listening to music with a small group of friends.  I don't mean hanging with a group of friends with music playing in the background.  I mean sitting with a friend or two, close to the stereo speakers, listening attentively, intensely, to song after song, discussing and analysing favorite passages, ending the session with cassettes and CDs strewn all over the floor.

For whatever reasons, there could be many--age, moving around too much, family, lack of time--these moments of musical sociability seem to be fewer and farther between in my life.  Not only does this blog give me the opportunity to focus more closely on music, rather than on collecting, but it also is a way to reach out, across the divides of space and time, to the (small?) group of music lovers that share my musical passions.

In spite of my efforts to free my soul from the drudgery of collecting, I still have more accumulated music than I will be able to get through in my lifetime.  The recordings featured in this post are a good example of the futility of hoarding.  I have had this group of cassettes for fifteen years now and I only last week got around to listening to them.


All of these cassettes are part of a set I picked up in Bamako in 2003. 

I have no specialized knowledge of Malian guitar bands of the 1970s. And everything I do know is mostly becuase of Eric Charry's research, Stefan Werdekker's blog, and Graeme Counsel's website.  I can't tell you much about any of these recordings.  Stefan has written about the Orchestre Bronkoni de Niono (the ever informative Ngoni contributed some insightful comments as well), Manguemusic has featured several cuts from a few of these cassettes.

I don't know if these recordings are dubs of commercial releases or if they are dubs of reels from the Radio Nationale du Mali archives.  If I had to wager a guess, I would go with dubs of Radio Mali reels.  There are no LPs listed for most of these groups in Graeme Counsel's comprehensive discography.  [I have a few other cassettes that Dramane Doumbia recorded for me that are obviously dubs of LPs.  You can hear the difference.]  Does anyone know if these Super Djata tracks were ever commercially released?

Download Baniko Jazz de Dioïla

Download Le Bida Regional de Koulikoro

Download Le Souala Band de Banamba

Download Orchestre Bronkoni de Niono

Download Super Djata Band

Download Super Mono Band de Bougouni

Download Thiwara Band - Koumi Djosse

Download Thiwara Band de Kati

The beautiful picture was taken by Jorge Tutor, 

Enjoy the music!

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. I couldn't unzip the Super Djata file.

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    2. Hi John, I just tried it and it seems to be working now. If you still can't unzip it. I will reupload the file.

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  2. Well said! I collected for a number of years, mainly cassettes and digital music – nothing close to what you have. At one point, I got saturated, only/mainly listening to music as a background noise and then automatically/pathologically (almost) stopped listening, let alone acquiring music. I thought learning how to play an instrument may be a remedy and bought in intervals a djembe, an oud and a guitar – didn’t help as I hardly came around to using them! My interest in music rekindled gradually only recently. I then noticed that my external hard disk (containing about 1 TB of music) and quite a few copied CDs had kicked the bucket while I was hibernating. I’m now planning to take lessons... and luckily, in contrast to the advanced digital tech., the handcrafted instruments and the old-school vinyls (& tapes) are still alive and kicking!

    Needless to say that you’re doing a fantastic job! Many Thanks!

    PS. "Stefan Werdekker's blog” leads to a 404 error.

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  3. Thanks much for the share. I too was in Bamako in 2003, alas, didn't do what you did, though collected a handful of tapes and CDs ! :)

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  4. Marvelous !! These orchestras are pure gold. Thanks a lot for sharing all this.
    I'm sorry to tell you the Super Djata Band zip comes without the music (at least I couldn't open it)

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    Replies
    1. I have reuploaded the Super Djata file and replaced the old link. This one should work.

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  5. I truly share that feeling, contrary to compulsively storing music, but life is not always generous with free time, a couple of months ago I can't hear what I download, but I will enjoy these wonders even if I don't sleep, thanks!

    I am especially interested in what concerns Massambou Wélé Diallo, Artistic Director of the Ensemble National du Mali, in the groups: Super Mono Band of Bougouni and Thiwara Band of Kati, this Band, I suspect that it is the Military Band of Kati (The Kati Barracks), I have some interesting videos of this Band, which because of its poor sound I had not yet shared, maybe now is the time...

    I will return with other comments, "Inch'Allah"

    Thanks friend.

    http://www.mali-music.com/Cat/CatE/EnsembleInstrumental.htm#MWD

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  6. Amazing, amazing share. Thank you very much for all these old recordings.

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  7. Amazing Music! Treasure Your K7s! Thank You!
    Oh, how I wish I bought much more K7s when I visited West-Africa in the 1990s!

    Just a question, about my post to which you refer: were that your K7s of which some tracks were broadcasted on WFMU in 2012?

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    Replies
    1. Hi Mangue, As far as I know the tracks broadcast on WFMU didn't come from my cassette copies of these recordings. thanks

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  8. Beautiful music! Thanks a lot for the share!!!
    Pierre B.

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  9. As there is a lot of music and I don't know when I will have time to comment, although it is always better to summarize, I will post comments as I have something new to comment...

    Today the album of "Le Bida Regional de Koulikoro" catches my attention, I don't know if it is the same orchestra with different names or from different periods, but I am convinced that it is the " Baniko Jazz de Dioila Orchestra" (The river Bani in Dioila also belongs to the region of Koulikoro and if I am not mistaken it makes a border between the two Bamana kingdoms), on the other hand this orchestra "Bida" does not resemble the so-called "L' Orchestre Le Bida de la Capitale" and does not have the same sound as the other cassette with the name "Baniko Jazz de Dioila ",don't know if "Bida" will have another meaning, but for me Bida only refers to the mythical Soninke snake of the Wagadou Kingdom.

    Why do I think this?

    http://bamada.net/que-sont-ils-devenus-adama-namakoro-fomba-les-peregrinations-de-la-voix-du-banico

    In this cassette we find three famous songs by Adama Namakoro Fomba, sung by himself, and according to his own story when he entered the orchestra, it was directed by Mamadou Sylla dit Gorgui, that would explain the identity of the wonderful saxophone in the recording, the mythical saxophonist and also donso belonging to the Super Biton de Segou.

    https://youtu.be/bOjk6I278c4?t=101

    Sylla is a Soninké name, maybe he baptized the orchestra as "Bida"

    Adama's Songs:

    1- Koniya magni
    https://youtu.be/ozxeour_1d4

    7- Mariamou
    https://youtu.be/w_vTYIoRKFc

    8- Mari
    https://youtu.be/o98PXwqUJcM


    (The titles in the album on YouTube are wrong)

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  10. i love ALL the music on your site. and this post will take awhile to listen to and digest.
    thank u so much for that opportunity
    robert

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  11. Someone told me on my YouTube channel that Grand Papa Diabaté, Sekou Bembeya Diabaté's teacher, was the solo guitar in the Kati Thiwara Band from 1973 - 78, checking the file of Koumi Djossé, which I identified as two albums, I discover that song 7 and 8 are actually Sanjina and Kay, the first two songs of the album of the Orchestre Regional de Kayes.

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  12. On the Baniko tracks 5 and 6, they do tunes that were recorded by Orchestra Baobab, the first in a typical Cuban guahira son rhythm and probable provenance. I have no idea who did thess first, but when I interviewed the members of Baobab about ten years ago, they seemed largely unaware of many Guinean and Malian regional bands.

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