Alpha Yaya Diallo of Guinea-Conakry in West Africa is a formidable guitar player. He is known as one of the region's most flexible musicians, adept in the many styles of that country's various tribes, yet possessed of an instantly recognizable style that is distinctly his own. Alpha's playing is a remarkably fluid current of notes, framed within a timing at once precise and free.
The ancient society of griots or jaloli of the Manding hierarchy of West Africa would have forbidden a man like Alpha Yaya Diallo, born outside of their caste, to become a musician at all. Caste members were expected to live within the roles dictated by their birth. But in Guinea, or Guinea-Conakry as it is known in the surrounding region, times have been changing. The people, born of a multitude of ethnic groups keep their traditional culture vibrantly alive, but they have their radios, too, and the different styles of music consume one another.
In a world where many people live and die within the same town, Alpha was born lucky. His father was a traveling doctor who exposed him to the various regions and their different musical styles which entranced him. His mother had family in Senegal where they would spend summers, surrounded by a large community of Cape Verdeans who played a very different kind of music. By the time he was 12 they had settled in the musically rich Malinke region of Faranan where he began to play guitar by ear and to synthesize all that he had heard into his own unique style, which is now recognized as one of the most versatile among the Guineans. One can hear the rippling sound of the Mandinka kora, the rhythms of the Susu people, the bluesy riffs of the xalam or konting, a small guitarlike instrument played by the griots of many of the regional tribes and the soulful Arab-inflected vocal and flute melodies of his own tribe, the Fula or Peular. —Courtesy Calabash Music
