Kudos to The Lost Maestros for posting this wonderful video (from World Service‘s YouTube channel) of the Malian diva Coumba Sidibe. I have nothing to add to their summary of her career:
Mali’s Coumba Sidibe was a pioneering force behind the
evolution of wassoulou, the earthy, propulsive music that first captured the
imagination of west African listeners in the mid-’70s. A singer of elemental
power, she set the stage for a generation of artists including Oumou Sangaré,
Issa Bagayogo, and Nahawa Doumbia, although their international fame
consistently eluded her.
Born in
in 1950, Koninko ,
Mali
Sidibe began singing at regional harvest festivals at the age of seven,
following in the footsteps of her father Diara, a famed dancer and sorcerer
skilled in the ecstatic percussion and dance tradition known as sogoninkun, and
her mother, a vocalist of great local renown.
The first female member of l’Ensemble Instrumental National
du Mali, a state-sponsored orchestra created to represent the nation’s
folkloric traditions, Sidibe exited their ranks in 1977 to team with Alata
Brulaye, the creator of the kamelengon, a six-string harp modeled on the sacred
dosongoni, an instrument effectively off limits to popular musicians.
The kamelengoni‘s funky, percussive sound quickly emerged as
the foundation of the wassoulou aesthetic, a neo-traditional style that
threatened the long-standing cultural dominance of‘s jelis, the music-making Mali
caste whose roots date back to the 13th century. While the jelis performed
traditional songs targeted to the wealthy and powerful, the so-called
“kono” (i.e., the predominantly female “songbirds” at the
forefront of the wassoulou movement) addressed contemporary themes like romance
and feminism; hits like “Diya ye Banna” earned Sidibe the unofficial
title “Queen of Wassoulou,” and her backing group Le Super Mansa de
Wassoulou was the launching pad for future superstars including Sangaré,
arguably the most successful Malian artist of her generation. While a revered
figure in her homeland, Sidibe never attracted the attention of the world music
cognoscenti, and in the late ’90s she and her family relocated to New York
City, where she headlined a Sunday night residency at Harlem’s St. Nick’s Pub.
Sidibe died inBrooklyn on May 10, 2009.
