Seckou Keita At Crescent Arts Centre

Seckou Keita
Crescent Arts Centre
Belfast, N. Ireland
September 27, 2024

Have a good rummage around at home. If you have a pumpkin in your kitchen or larder, if you can dig out an old fishing rod from your garage or attic, if you can requisition a piece of mahogany furniture and then persuade a local farmer to part with a cow then you have the basic ingredients to make your own kora. Next stop, YouTube.

With great care and no little difficulty you assemble all the pieces—the hollowed gourd for your resonator, the cow skin stretched tightly across its gaping mouth, the mahogany serving for the log neck and double bridge, the fishing line providing the twenty-two strings. There, you have done your best, no doubt about that, but it probably does not look nearly as beautiful as the one that Seckou Keita brought to Belfast, patterned as it was with shining silver studs, its gourd gleaming like polished wood. But it would be a start.

Then you have to tame it. The left-hand thumb must learn to sustain relentless bass lines and ostinatos. As Keita related, mastering this technique takes "days, weeks, months, years." First step completed, you must then train the right-hand thumb to play a melodic line, simultaneously of course with the bass line. It too takes "days, weeks, months, years" to master. Finally, you must train your two index fingers to improvise simultaneously with the separate bass and melodic lines. It takes... you guessed it, a hell of a long time.

Kieta's stage patter is well honed, as you might expect from someone who has made the UK his home since 1999, touring the length and breadth of the country year upon year. The gentle, teasing humor, the corny jokes and the flattery towards the audience probably vary little from one gig to the next, but only a cynic could fail to be charmed by his smile and the warmth he radiates.

Then there is his playing. All that warmth, grace and humor are ever present in his music too, not to mention a jaw-dropping technique that seems to trick the ears. How can just four digits conjure such heavenly sounds, such dizzying cascades, such captivating swirling arpeggios? Such poetry, such thunder.

Keita spun a delicate melodic web on "Distance," an elegant reminder that the kora was an instrument of the royal courts of the great West African empires from the 13th century onwards—a vast territory that today comprises a dozen African states.

Few kora players, however, has done as much as Keita to modernize the kora, not just by dint of his groundbreaking collaborations with musicians such as pianist Omar Sosa, harpist Catrin Finch, guitarist Antonio Forcione, violinist L. Subramaniam and singers Paul Weller and Damon Albarn, but by his tuning innovations which combine the four basic kora tunings of Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Gambia and Mali.

Such nuances are probably lost to all but the most enthusiastic fans of kora, and the large number of hands that went up when Keita asked who was seeing a kora for the first time indicated that the majority of the Belfast audience was experiencing music anew.

And yet in Keita's harp-cum-lute-like instrument, in the language he forged between rhythm, melody and harmony, lie the roots of nearly all the music we take for granted today.

There was no taking for granted the stunning intro of tumbling melodies—intricate and rapid—that announced "Little Bro." Keita conducted a singalong; shy and unconvincing at first (well, how is your Wolof?) the audience grew in voice with repeated encouragement.

Introducing the next number "If Only I Knew" Keita added jokingly ... " what I was singing about ... " before translating the previous singalong as "escaping, escaping, escaping the darkness." Inspired by his grandfather, the latter number—like "Little Bro"---conveyed a sense of longing in the lilting West African melodies. An urgent rhythmic mantra came to dominate the melody which receded into the background as Keita chopped at the strings with the edge of his right hand—a sculptor of sound.

As a singer Keita is not especially notable, but he exuded warmth and sincerity on Wolof-sung ballads of gently persuasive lyricism. An extended wordless singalong of child-like simplicity—was our Wolof that bad?—perhaps overstayed its welcome when clapping was added, but by this stage Keita had the audience in the feelgood palm of his hands. Downing the kora he turned to the sabar, a traditional Senegalese drum played with hand and stick, to rally the flagging choir.

Taking a break from the hectic business of polyphonic plucking, strumming and singing, Keita explained at length the workings of the kora, its constituent parts and the roles they play. Even this patient lesson in deconstruction, laying an infectious bass ostinato, overlaying a radiant melody and then crowning with dashing improvised lines was a pleasure to behold.

Before signing off Keita reminded the audience of the pittance most artists earn from digital sales on the likes of Spotify, urging them to support young artists by going to their gigs, purchasing their albums and merchandise. His final number was "The Future Strings." Written in 2009, Keita first recorded it with Welsh harpist Catrin Finch on the album Clychau Dibon (Astar Artes/Mwldan Records, 2013). But right from the song's birth a seed had been planted in Keita's mind to adapt it for an orchestra. Fast-forward to 2023 and this dream became a reality when Keita recorded the song with the BBC Concert Orchestra for the album African Rhapsodies (Claves Records).

Watching this griot alone at play, his lush melodies carried on potent rhythmic wings, it was not difficult to see where his orchestral vision had come from, for this was a multi-layered symphony of sumptuous beauty, played with just four digits and a lot of heart. But it was likely already brewing in those early days, weeks, months and years in Ziguinchor, Senegal.

Comments