National Geographic Music (National Geographic)

Mali, an arid, landlocked nation filling the interior of West Africa, is a cultural colossus. It has produced international stars with four Grammy Awards nominations and two awards to their credit, and its contemporary music serves as a rich and varied reminder of American music's West African roots. To listen to Mali's contemporary music alongside blues, R&B, jazz and rock 'n' roll is to realize that they are siblings separated at birth and now reunited in the age of technology.

History runs deep in Mali. In the 13th century C.E., long before French colonizers arrived, the peaceful and productive Malian Empire spread through much of today's West Africa, far beyond the country's present borders. Many different ethnic groups came together under a visionary Manding king, Sunjata Keita, to control the trans-Saharan trade of salt and gold. The empire enjoyed two centuries of peace and glory, and that golden era lives on today in songs and stories. Contemporary Mali is far poorer and more challenged than the empire at its height, or indeed than the Songhai and Bambara kingdoms that followed Mali and preceded the French colonial era. The Manding now rub shoulders and share scant resources with Fulani (Peul), Bambara, Bobo, Dogon, Tamascheck, Soninke, Songhoi, Tuareg and other peoples. But recalling the inclusive vision of Sunjata, Malians mostly get along and show a respect for cultural diversity unusual in modern Africa.

Each of these ethnic groups has its own rich musical tradition, and together, they form one of the most enchanting musical landscapes in the world. If Malians are more acutely in touch with their history than many other Africans, much credit goes to the griots, or jelis, as they are called in Mali's dominant Bambara language. Jelis fulfill many roles, including historian, diplomat and entertainer. Jelis are also some of Mali's biggest pop stars. During Mali's French colonial period—roughly 1900–1959—the whole world was rocked by the emergence of phonographs and radios and by the first worldwide pop crazes, Afro-Cuban music and big-band jazz. By the time Mali achieved its independence, bands in many African cities, including the Malian capitol Bamako, were trying to imitate these international sounds.

Mali's first president, Modibo Keita, was an Africanist keen to preserve and protect Malian culture, so he created a national system of state-sponsored bands and traditional ensembles. The best artists in each town would go to the regional level; the best in each region would come to the capitol to play in the Instrumental Ensemble of Mali and the National Orchestra. The electric dance bands that grew out of this movement created a remarkable fusion of griot music and other indigenous Malian sounds and the popular dance music emanating from abroad. That sound is best represented by the Super Rail Band of Bamako, which gave star singers Salif Keita and Mory Kanté (of neighboring Guinea) their start and continues today. In 1968, Modibo Keita was overthrown in a coup led by a military man, Moussa Traoré, who ruled the country as a dictator until he was overthrown in a popular uprising in 1991. Although Traoré retreated from Keita's commitment to culture and withdrew funding for Mali's national ensembles, the country's musical development continued. Since the 1990s, democracy has flourished under twice-elected President Alfa Omar Konaré, and the nations' music faces a bright future.

Today, Mali can boast a dazzling variety of ethnic music fusions styles, from the hunter-derived Wassoulou sound of the south, to Bambara, Bobo and Senufo pop from the east, to the other-worldly northern styles, epitomized in the music of Ali Farka Toure. In part because most of these ethnic styles use five-note (pentatonic) scales, listeners find in them clear links to American blues. This is a complex and mysterious subject as full of surprising twists and turns as Mali's seemingly endless stream of pentatonic music styles. With the rise of modern, panethnic musicians like Habib Koite and Rokia Traoré, Mali remains at the cutting edge of the evolving Afropop story. No country anywhere has so consistently made sense of its ancient and modern cultural realities. – Banning Eyre, Courtesy Afropop Worldwide: www.afropop.org