SECKOU KEITA of CATRIN FINCH & SECKOU KEITA: WOMAD 2020 Interviews
An interview by Tim Gruar.
In October last year, organisers announced the first of the big hitters coming to this year’s WOMAD Festival. Among them was harpist Catrin Finch and renowned kora player Seckou Keita, who have been nominated for a string of world music gongs over the last year, including the coveted BBC Radio2 Folk Awards, for their second album SOAR. That album also took out fRoots Magazine’s Critics Poll Album of the year 2018, Best Transglobal Album of The Year in the Transglobal World Music Awards and ‘Best Fusion’ in the Songlines Music Awards 2019. So, given all the fuss, I decided to call up Sekou Keita and find out what all the hoo-haa was about and why it’s unthinkable to miss their performance at this year’s 2020 WOMAD.
We talk over ‘WhatsApp’ between France and New Zealand. The line is as clear as day. Isn’t it wonderful how we can talk over the internet, I ask him. Look at how technology can improve communication and collaboration! “It has massively changed lives in good ways and bad ways, ha-ha,” he replies.
Do you remember when you career started, when you were making music on tiny cassettes? “Oh my God, yes. Back then, they were everything. Now you don’t even see them!”
Seckou Keita, you are a child of the 70’s. You were born in 1978! The world is so different… “Yes,” he laughs, “I came from Lindiane. It’s a suburb of Ziguinchor. This was, and is, the capital of the Casamance region, in southern Senegal. My mother (Fatou Bintou), she was the daughter of (Jali Kemo) Cissokho (He was one of southern Senegal’s most renowned and revered griots). Everybody in our family – the brothers, uncles, great-uncles, grand-fathers, even great-fathers – all griots. I can trace back many, many centuries.”
Here, we pause to explain: The griot is a phenomenon vital to West African music. They are from a family of musicians, where the skills are passed down from one generation to the next. You are born into the family of griots and expected to take up the kora. There is no quarter given for anyone who does not. This is your destiny, Seckou explains to me. Much has been written about the bewildering range of a griot’s skills and callings – poet, historian, musician, archivist, negotiator, diplomat, wedding-organiser, instrument maker, peacemaker, herald and much more. The griot ‘lore’ is only orally transmitted from father to son, or father to daughter (or even mother to son and daughter) down through the generations and centuries.
Seckou further explains that his father (Elhaji Mohammed Keita), wasn’t a griot at all, but instead a descendant of Emperor Sunjata Keita (responsible for the creation of the Malian Empire back in the 13th century. It seems that the family line of bards (griots) are born solely to ‘sing the praises’ of Sunjata and all his ‘Keita’ descendants. So, to be half griot and half Keita is to have the blood of both poet and king rushing through your veins.
“My father”, he continues, “was a travelling spiritual healer. He was a holy man. Like a priest, sort of.” But he disappeared very soon after Sekou was born. He calls him: l’homme invisible – ‘the invisible man’, I say. “He was not there.”
Later in life, Seckou set out to find his father, starting an epic search that included the ancient kingdom of Gabou (now known as southern Senegal) and Guinea. This is where the kora (the 21-stringed African harp), the very symbol of West African Manding culture was originally conceived many centuries ago. Eventually, he ended up in the Malian capital of Bamako, where he’d heard his father was living. “But just as I was getting ready to meet him there, I hear that he had died. There’s no right or wrong, I always say. It just happened that way, it is life! It was just supposed to happen that way.”
I ask – If your father was not around, then how did you learn about being a griot, and playing the kora?
“It was my grandfather (Jali Kemo). You know, the word jali, it means ‘griot’ (in the language of people from Manding). My grandfather was very strict, and I had to do Quranic school and practice the kora every single day, just like my brothers and uncles. I did think he was being harsh but now I appreciate it.”
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He says that, in line with tradition, he started his apprenticeship on the kora when he was seven years old, learning by closely watching other kora players and learned quickly. By his early teens however, he was starting to be influenced by other styles of music – like Wolof, Fulani, Manding, Djola, Manjak, Balantes. “All of these were popular because in Lindiane, people spoke many languages – and there were Christians, Muslims and many others.”
“I wanted to also learn drumming. So, I learned the drumming techniques; first the seourouba drums, and djembe and sabra, these are all different styles. When I was about fifteen years old, my uncle (Jali Solo Cissokho) got me on a tour to Dakar (to play in a regional music competition). We won the prize! So, we started playing that area a lot after that. Then we went to (the Rikscenen) Oslo, Norway, to be part of a (collaborative project) – lots of musicians from Cuba, India, Europe. It was a huge shock for me! But thank god my uncle was there!”
That was the start of a lifetime of performing on stages around the world. His radical experiments with the kora, and the collaborations have led to a huge range of variety in his work. He is something of a magpie, picking up techniques as diverse as the countries he’s played in.
He’s toured with the Sierra Leonean musician Francis Fuster, Paul Simon, ‘Baka Beyond, Miriam Makeba and Manu Dibango. Founders of Baka Beyond, Martin Cradick and Su Hart helped to produce his first solo kora album Baiyo (‘Orphan’), released in 2000 which showcased some of Seckou’s experimental kora tunings. He is often quoted as ‘falling upon’ the tunings as lucky mistakes: “One day I was looking after my daughter and trying to get some writing done. I started playing. Then I found that I’d tuned up wrong. Strangely enough, I loved what I heard and, so, tried to build on it.”
Since then he’s played as a soloist and in various family bands, in Senegal, Mali and throughout Europe and is now in hot demand on the World Music stage. He has had many collaborations over the years. I asked him how he came to work with Catrin Finch. “In March 2012”, he tells me, “I was doing a concert to a UN delegation in Rome when he received a call from my manager (at the time). “Come to Wales quick. Man, you gotta get your butt here.” Because the political situation in Mali had meant that (the Malian kora virtuoso) Toumani (Diabate) couldn’t come. He was supposed to do a 5-show (collaboration) with (young Welsh harpist) Catrin (Finch) in Wales. Toumani left and made it to Paris, then the coup d’tat happened, and he’s stuck, can’t go back to Mali, where his family are and he doesn’t want to go to Wales while this is going on. (He’s referring to the 2012 Malian revolution that began on 21 March, when mutinying Malian soldiers, displeased with the management of the Tuareg rebellion, attacked several locations in the capital Bamako, including the presidential palace, state television, and military barracks).”
“So,” he continues to explain, “I step in because Catrin had no clue what a kora sounds like, never played with one before. And I check with Toumani, who was ok with it. And I arrived, and she is sitting there, wondering what’s happening, no idea who was coming and what was going to happen! I walked in and basically started to prepare, giving her ideas about the whole tour and I helped prepare the repertoire before finally handing over to Toumani, who managed to arrive with just hours before the first concert of the tour. She was a bit confused but managed ok in the end. She must have thought: “What is going on?” Is not normal to do it this way. But I clicked more with Catrin in the rehearsal and the preparation. Musical direction was really happening. I came and played as a trio with them on a couple of shows. We really connected – musically.”
And it was months later, when Toumani couldn’t continue and I came back. After much experimentation and rehearsal, they made the album ‘Clychau Dibon’ (2013), which was hailed as an immediate cross-cultural success, bringing on a mix of his music and Catrin’s. ‘Future Strings’ is one example of how the sounds of a harp and kora are so beautifully intertwined. “I was saving it for my solo album – but ok! We were trying not to overtake each other’s traditions. It was surprising, and a shock that it worked.” The tunings are so similar, despite the technics of each instruments. “We thought this, too. But somehow it does work. With winning the first awards, Catrin’s old manager came to me to apologise that he didn’t have faith that it would work. Hmmm, yes it did.”
I have to ask about the second album, ‘SOAR’, which has a very unique theme – The re-generation of the Osprey (a sea bird common to both Senegal and Wales that has almost become extinct).
“Yes. The first album was a challenge, but we did it. And we become one of these fantastic duos around the world. Then the second album (’SOAR’) had to be as good, even better than the first. We had all these ideas – choirs, different arrangements and bands, players. And I said I would take the risk and produce this album with myself and Catrin. And I’m glad it was just us.”
“The idea of the Osprey”, he says, “came from our PR woman (Tamsin Davies) whose dad was working at the Dyfi Osprey Centre (Wales).” Apparently, the bird was once really common in Wales until about 400 years ago when they were persecuted for stealing fish from nearby estate ponds. I was singing the second song (Téranga-Bah – “Open the gates, open the gates”), the gates which open both ways – from Senegal to Europe we open our hearts and vice versa – hospitality goes both ways. Welcome to our land with no passports, etc. No borders!”
Then, we discovered from Tamsin that the Osprey Centre was only up the road from where we were recording. We learned that the Osprey had just started to migrate again (thanks to an intensive breeding programme), leaving Wales in the winter to go to Senegal, all that way, then spend the summer there. And then they fly all the way back to have their young in the rocks and the cliffs near us!” That round trip is celebrated in the album’s opening song Clarach.). The album was launched at the Dyfi observatory, and the first-born female following the gig was called ‘Telyn’ – welsh for ‘harp’.
“Imagine, I’m from Senegal and Catrin from Wales. It’s a metaphor for how you can get along, with no borders. And suddenly, two harps, travelling together – we are soaring! It is wonderful.”
Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita will be performing at WOMAD 2020 on both Friday 13th and Saturday 14th March. Tickets to WOMAD 2020 are still available from the WOMAD website, but get in quick as this is looking like it will sell out!
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