Oumar Konate – Maya Maya (Clermont Music, 2016)
Following up on his 2014 release of Addoh, Malian guitarist and vocalist Oumar Konate has hit the musical streets this time with Maya Maya, out on the Clermont Music label.
Fashioning his own sound out of a mix of Mali’s rich musical tradition with western rock music, Mr. Konate erases the boundaries by way of fusing call-and-response vocals with fiery rock guitar lines to blaze a new path for Mali’s musical landscape.
Taking on electric and acoustic guitars and lead vocals Mr. Konate has teamed up with percussionist and drummer Makan Camara, bassist and backing vocalist Cheick Siriman Sissoko, slide and pedal steel guitarist Keven Maul and pianist Professor Louie to give voice to Mali’s up-and-coming musicians and his country’s precarious future in the face of growing violence, government corruption and an extremist fundamentalist movement.
Listeners will recognize the familiar strains of that rolling rhythmic Malian sound on the opening track “Alada” of Maya Maya, but Mr. Konate and fellow musicians conjure up a decidedly sharper sound, going for the sleeker, edgier take to that desert blues sound. Tracks like “La Ihala,” title track “Maya Maya” and “Waiheedji Taga” bristle with a seductive electricity fashioned out of searing guitar licks and hypnotic percussion that is thrilling.
Vocals with an aching poignancy mark such tracks as the piano threaded “Djama” and the lonely sounds conjured up on “Nedoum Bedefe.” “Hinchi Hinchi” is just downright ferociously rocking, as is the closing track “Hinchi Instrumental #1.”
It takes only a listen of Mr. Konate’s guitar licks and Mr. Camara’s drumming to see a bit of the road ahead for Mali’s musical landscape and it is kickass.
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Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow. Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931. Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.