Photo Credits: Image Courtesy Of Calabash Music
Mory Kante & Salif Keita
Mory Kante, Salif Keita and Djelimady Tounkara and many other great musicians from Mali started as members of the Rail Band, one the most legendary names of African music.
The Rail Band was founded in 1970, in Mali, with the sponsorship of the railway administration and the Ministry of Information. The National Railway Company secured a permanent venue at the Buffet Bar in the Station Hotel in Bamako. The band was formed with the hope of safeguarding and developing Malian music. The general idea was that weary travelers would tumble into the Buffet Bar where the Rail Band would perform real Manding music.
Singing in Bambara, a Manding language spoken not only in Mali, but also in Guinea, Gambia, and parts of Senegal, the band adopted traditional kora and balafon songs and rhythms mixing in an Islamic-influenced vocal style to what was becoming modern urban pop music.
Salif Keita began singing lead for the Rail Band at its inception, when he was only 21. Instruments and equipment were government-owned, and band members were considered government employees. The Rail Band quickly became a sort of rite-of-passage for Malian musical talent. As mentioned, Salif Keita got his start with them, as did guitarist Kante Manfila (who both soon left the Rail Band to start Les Ambassadeurs), and singer Mory Kante (who assumed lead vocal responsibilities after Keita left). The Rail Band's music was Manding-influenced, Latin-tinged, with lightness and swing. And despite the modern instruments you can clearly hear the strains of the original Manding music.
The idea of the original Rail Band stills survives to this day, though they now compete with discos and video clubs, and as a result they started playing only once a week. Rail Band is one of African pop music's most important bands, a sort of African answer to The Beatles or Rolling Stones. The parallels are not as unlikely as they may at first appear. Both the Beatles and Stones began by copying American prototypes, while in the1960s and 1970s, African musicians copied Cuban music. After liberation, several African governments wished to do something to stimulate their own African culture, and several of them, like Mali and Guinea, set about constructing state bands.
Without coercing musicians to play only traditional music, they gave them instruments and put them on the state payrolls. Several of these bands came to play an important role in the blossoming of African music in the 1960s and 1970s, among other reasons because many artists for the first time had access to modern instruments such as electric guitars, keyboards and saxophones.
Rail Band belongs to this tradition but stands in a unique position because of its closeness to the Malian railway. In 1970 the stationmaster in Bamako asked the griot Tidiana Kone to put together a band that could play in the foyer of the railway hotel and drive the culture forward. In the beginning, Rail Band played for hours, a cultural blend of pop songs and more traditional Malian songs with modern settings. Salif Keita came to the group in the early days as a singer and was with them for ages before breaking out and forming Les Ambassadeurs. Mory Kante started his career with Rail Band when he studied the kora in Bamako.
One day Salif Keita arrived too late to play, so took over for Mory Kante as vocalist, and both worked for a while as singers. In the five years that the Rail Band existed, they developed a special style and mixed calypso and Latin American music, jazz and big band sounds with their own, local traditions.
The album Rail Band with Salif Keita and Mory Kante is a good collection of the classic songs from the legendary band. Much of the material is quite special and provides an atmosphere of jamming sessions, with songs lasting up to ten minutes. These songs have a unique authenticity, characterized by a newly created optimism that in many ways can be compared with The Beatles in Europe. It is also terribly interesting to hear the predecessors to the recent songs of Salif Keita, for example "Jurukan" that is an early version of the successful track "Mandjou," but here sounds more raw and rickety. The soul and atmosphere are not lacking here anyway, and it's just like stepping into the railway hotel in Bamako in 1971.
— Courtesy Calabash Music
