Kar
Kar is Coming
Boubacar Traore makes a couple of appearances at Harbourfront Centre's Labatt's Blues & BBQ Festival, in a guitar workshop at 7:00pm on Saturday with Super Chikan, July 7 and again on Sunday, July 8 at 3:30pm for a full set on the Norigen Stage.
When Boubacar Traore rolls into Toronto for his appearances at Harbourfront Centre's Labatt's Blues & BBQ Festival, he will be bringing more than the reputation as the heir apparent to the African blues mantle of Ali Farke Toure. Kar Kar, as he is known, will be bringing with him the legacy of the African musician.
It would be a mistake to think of Boubacar Traore as simply a blues musician. Although there is a strong case to be made for connecting the historic links of American blues with the music from Mali, in fact the music of Mali incorporates a much broader spectrum than can be attributed to the branch that leads to our blues. To label him simply as a blues musician fails to recognize the magnificent traditions of this great African culture. If you do not take 'blues' as a form of music, but rather as a description of a feeling, you begin to discover the key to Kar Kar, and his music.
Boubacar Traore is a musician whose art and biography are striking not so much for their balance as for their extremes. In the 1960s he was an idol for the whole west coast of Africa. Forgotten in the 1970s, rediscovered in the 1980s, and now touring once again in Europe, and for the first time, in North America, in the 1990s.
In the sixties, the people of Mali awoke each morning to his music on the radio. In the evening, they'd dance to it in clubs. They called him Kar Kar, from kari kari, meaning 'one who dribbles too much'. The name has stuck ever since those soccer-playing days. His big hit, Mali Twist, served as a kind of national anthem for the newly emerging country of Mali, in 1963. In the song he called upon his compatriots to rebuild the country after independence. He was regarded alternately as the Chuck Berry, the James Brown, the Elvis Presley, the Johnny Hallyday, of Mali, but because there were no music royalties paid, he rarely had enough money in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He turned to other kinds of work - tailor, a salesman, agricultural agent - and his music became something shared only with a close circle of friends.
In 1987, he appeared on Malian television surprising the whole country, many of whom mistook him for his older brother, who indeed had died a few years before. When his beloved wife Pierette died suddenly that same year, Boubacar was lost in grief. He left for France, determined to earn enough money to support his 6 children at home. He worked construction jobs, and played guitar only within the African expatriate community there. A few years later a British record producer happened to hear a tape of a radio show Boubacar had performed, and excitedly sent someone to Bamako to find him. The people in Bamako sent the emissary to Kayes, Boubacar's home village in western Mali, where he learned that Boubacar wasn't in Mali at all, but in Paris. They eventually tracked him down, and brought him to England to record two new albums. His career took on a new life. He toured in England, Switzerland, and Canada, and played only one date in the United States, in Seattle. Upon his return to Mali, a studio in Bamako, at the Revue Noir's initiative, produced his third album, Les Enfants de Pierette (Pierette's Children), with the participation of several big names in Malian music including Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate, and Ketetigul Diabate.
On his latest album entitled Macire, (Label Blue/Festival Distributions) Boubacar Traore has enlisted the help of vocalist producer Habib Koite, as well as the Bamada musicians to create a recording which Cliff Furnald of Rootsworld describes as 'another marvelous record of his human scale and natural talent'. Singing songs about exile, about his beloved wife Pierrette, about love and the human condition, Macire also contains a playful recording of the old dance hit, The Madison (a huge song with the Malian youth in the sixties)
For Kar Kar, his melodies are songs to which the guitar sings the second vocal part. 'The guitar has a magic attraction for me', he says in trying to describe his relationship with the instrument. He plays the guitar as if it were a kora, the 21 stringed harp that is so well known in Malian music. The roots of the music are in the distinctive Khassonke rhythms of the Kayes region in northwest Mali, but Arabic influences are also present
Boubacar is an artist who affected an entire generation. His was the voice of a nation, its hopes and its fears. He is a storyteller, and his songs deal with daily living, the many facets of love, political conditions and solidarity. Sometimes they are small parables, resonant with meanings we'll never be able to understand, but clear to his friends. Perhaps the final words are best said by one of his peers, Ali Farka Toure: 'If the maximum is five, I give ten to Kar Kar'.
However, it would be a mistake to think of Boubacar Traore as simply a blues musician. Although there is a strong case to be made for connecting the historic links of American blues with the music from Mali, in fact the music of Mali incorporates a much broader spectrum than can be attributed to the branch that leads to our blues. To label him simply as a blues musician fails to recognize the magnificent traditions of this great African culture. If you do not take 'blues' as a form of music, but rather as a description of a feeling, you begin to discover the key to Kar Kar, and his music.
In addition to his Toronto appearance, Boubacar Traore will make several more festival appearances in Canada this summer including Festival d'ete - Quebec City (July 9-10), the Vancouver Folk Festival (July 14-15) and Nuits d'Afrique, Montreal (July 17-18).