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YY 007CD
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"Abdoulaye Traore of the Malian village Mountougoula recalls an early childhood of listening intently to his father's hunter harp. Abdoulaye quickly learned to scrape the accompanying nègè, sing backing parts, and dance the blurred, rapid-fire footwork of Wasulu hunters. In 2008 he completed apprenticeship with his master, the legendary Yoro Sidibe (YY005). A young lion of this funky old-time groove, Abdoulaye aspires to become a hunters' musician of the highest caliber, one who lives in accordance with the longstanding way of hunting, inciting hunters to provide wild game, quelling strife where it crosses his path, moralizing listeners from all walks of life, and satisfying performance goers with exceptional music and dance. This CD is a re-release of the first of his seven commercial cassettes."
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YY 006CD
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"A refresher in all things Yaala: Our last release was the American debut of monumental Malian hunters' musician Yoro Sidibe, the acknowledged legend and master of what some (like ethnomusicologist Eric Charry) have called the most ancient music still being performed, that of the donso ngoni artists of rural West Africa. Ngoni is a Bamana word meaning stringed instrument; donso means hunter. A donso ngoni player's strength lies in his ability to sing powerfully and imaginatively for great lengths of time about the great men who've won fame tracking and killing wild game. These musicians continue to play an essential role in modern Malian society through both praising legendary hunters and preparing contemporary hunters for the hunt. In parts of Mali, the landlocked country in West Africa where Sidibe, Toba Seydou Traore and Abdoulaye Traore are from, one can still spy these hunters and their musicians loping about in amulet-laden cloaks, pre-Muslim, pre-Christian, pre-modern. It cannot be overstated: this group is a direct link to an ancient world of charmed beasts and superhuman power, which men harness to enact good in a world filled with evil, and vice versa... We here at Yaala can't get enough of the donso ngoni and we're wild about the myths and legends that make the culture of the hunters so rich and fascinating. Beyond that, we find our enjoyment of the music to be only partly intellectual; there is little chin-rubbing involved, little suffering through that which we do not understand, and instead much head-bobbing and foot-tapping. This is booty-shaking dance music for getting one fired up to go out and DO IT, and not music to mellow out to, literally: the best hunters' musicians get the adrenaline flowing in those men who're about to head out into the night, rifles and shotguns at the ready... The latest releases from YYR feature two prominent contemporary donso ngoni players and singers, both protégés of Yoro Sidibe. In this context the word protégé or apprentice is not inaccurate; not everyone can decide to become a donso, and the gift is said to be passed down from strong women to strong sons; it is equally a gift to be able to recognize which young boys have what it takes to brave both the bush and the strings of the donso ngoni. Young men are apprenticed to the great elder musicians and earn their place in the hierarchical society of the donsos. Toba Seydou Traore and Abdoulaye Traore have apprenticed to the greatest living donso ngoni artist in Yoro Sidibe, and to that end YYR is both proud and excited to bring their music to our little corner of the world. Toba Seydou Traore was born in the early 1960s near Bougouni in Mali, where as a young child he heard the music of hunters. Seydou's ensuing fascination led to much family conflict, but he persisted, later becoming an apprentice of renowned musician Yoro Sidibe (YY005) and eventually a master in his own right. Consistently satisfying listeners across Mali with his strong voice and truly comic sensibility, Seydou cries out here over the trance-inducing pulse of his deep six-string donso ngoni to exceptional hunters, Muslim holy men, and elderly blacksmiths, lauding their knowledge, power, and invaluable contributions to Mande society."
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YY 005CD
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"Back when I lived in Bougouni, I recall one day seeing a very old man wearing a floppy hat and mudcloth riding by on a bicycle. He was a fairly normal old fellow save the fact that he was barefoot and shouldering what appeared to be a gigantic musket. He wasn't the last old guy I saw riding around on a bicycle with a giant musket. One day I asked my friend, What about those old men riding around on their bicycles with the big guns? He whispered behind his hand: Donsos. Chausseurs. Hunters. My friends were not eager to tell me much more. It took the son of a donso who I befriended to tell me why they were hesitant to open their mouths, to wit: the donsos, he said, scratching his chin, are the men who are able to, for example if someone is dancing during a village festival who should not be dancing, they will hurt that person. Hurt? I asked. Make dead, he said. He told me that his father had once made medicaments for a man who was now very rich and who was repaying the debt by letting the son, my friend, live with him. Rich because of the medicaments? I asked. Bien sûr, he said. This magic was too old to let the tubab in without his earning it. This is their music. It is played before hunts and is meant to both harden the heart and excite it."
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YY 002CD
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"Bougouni is a town of approximately 20,000 people two hours south-southeast of Bamako, Mali's capital. It was established as a hunting camp a few hundred years ago. We were told there were lions in Bougouni until the mid '60s when they disappeared. Now it's little more than a truckstop on the only paved road connecting Bamako to Sikasso; once however it was the seat of Wasulu culture (even though it is officially in the French instituted cantonment of Banimotie and not Wasulu). Many Bougounians claim to be Muslim but the pull of ancient magic is still strong. I recorded this music in and around Bamako and Bougouni on a minidisc with a small stereo mic. Much of it features the ngoni played in the kamelen style, the style of ngoni playing invented in the 1950s by the Muslim majority government and which has found a home down south. The music was created in response to the continued influence of the powerful and very pagan musician/hunter's brotherhood (the donsos) whose cultural and political influence is still very strong throughout much of Mali. Their songs glorify the old pre-Muslim heroes of Mali like Sunjata (it was Sunjata's grandson Mansa Musa during whose reign Islam was fully accepted by the ruling classes of Mali), and the Muslim government knew it would be unwise to try to ban the donsos outright. So instead the government took the traditional donso-ngoni and retuned it to a higher scale, increased the tempos and inserted what can be rather banal lyrics about doing good for Mali and being a good citizen. Thus kamelengoni music was born. It was meant both to attract the youth (kamelen) and to be antidotal to the ancient and dark wisdom of the donsos. The ngoni players, variously Lassinabe Diakite, Amadou Diakite, Le Vieux, and Drissa Sangare are accompanied by someone scraping on an nkerinye, a tube of hollow metal. Distortion is an inbuilt part of much of this rural Malian music. Both djembe players and ngoni players (kamelen and donso) often add flattened insecticide cans pierced with hundreds of tin rings to the drums and ends of their ngonis; this adds a buzzing sound to everything they play. Dancers often wore anklets made of hundreds of old pop tops. And it was rare to see a public performance wherein the featured artists were not mic'ed and the signal sent through an old preamp and directly to a gigantic single horn speaker. Volume was often cranked past comfortable levels; feedback was ignored if not enjoyed. Audiophilia as it exists in the West did not exist in Mali, or at least the parameters were very different. Ergo the feedback and distortion-laden performance by the 'Griot Band' in Bamako. I recall now that I recorded this on December 31st, 1999. You get but a small selection of their performance; suffice to say I watched a few hours of it and it never really sounded a whole lot different than this few minute selection. Music is literally everywhere in Bougouni and Bamako, and the songs on Bougouni Yaalali (wandering around Bougouni) are representative of what you might (or might not) hear."
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YY 001CD
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Yaala Yaala is a new Drag City world music imprint, run by Jack Carneal.
"The name Yaala Yaala was taken directly from what many a Bougounian musician would answer when asked 'Ca va?' (how's it going?); 'Yaala yaala,' they'd answer. Just wandering. Yaala Yaala Records' goal is to release this music, in addition to similar music from parts of the world, particularly Mali and West Africa, that you might hear if you were wandering yourself among the cassette stalls in Bougouni, Bamako, Kolondieba, Sikasso, Segou, Fez, Marrakesh, Cairo, Dakar. We're releasing this music for no other reason than we like it!
One afternoon while meandering through Bougouni's sole market, a line of tar paper and lean-to shanties, I heard what initially sounded like an insane man giving birth. Listening more closely, I heard an insistent and funky beat percolating forth from the shadows of my main cassette man Abdoulaye's stall, interspersed with the utterances of the same man who sounded so insane; now he sounded as if he was gargling glass. I wandered into Abdoulaye's place and pointed at the boombox. He immediately started laughing. The tape was recorded in Kolondieba, he thought, a village not too far from Bougouni. The performers, Pekos and Yoro Diallo, were quite popular in the region. They were playing electrified ngonis in something like the kamelen or 'youth' style. Ngonis are large spike lutes; a four to five foot length of wood or reed is jammed into a hollowed out gourd and strings, often fishing line, are connected from a bridge at the base of the instrument to the end of the neck. Only the fancier ngonis have tuning pegs; most are tuned by pushing the strings with the thumbs to within a range that satisfies the player or the notes of a particular pentatonic scale. Since it's basically a harp there is no fretting of notes. Abdoulaye was able to tell me that these guys would put old mics inside of the gourds of their ngonis, run it to a preamp and thence to one of the ubiquitous horn speakers that serve as p.a.'s throughout Mali. As with just about all of the music I listened to in Mali, I have no idea what they're singing about but I do know they're reciting litanies of names. Many who sing in the griot style are meant to be subservient to the wider public subservient but elevated so they are probably being prompted, usually by the laying of small bills or coins at their feet, to sing about how great Coulibaly is, Sidibe is, what a strong man Traore is, etc."
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YY 003CD
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"Daouda Dembele is a jeli, or griot from a town near Segou, Mali. Segou is a small city on the banks of the Niger a few hours north of Bamako. Griots are the oral repositories of Mali's history. He plays the one to three-stringed spike-lute called the jelingoni; ngoni is a catchall term for any stringed instrument that is not a kora (the 20 plus stringed harp). 'Spike-lute' refers to any instrument that has a single neck made out of a stick or piece of bamboo. He's accompanied by someone beating on an overturned gourd. After the beginning introduction (I am Daouda Dembele from Kanye) I have no idea what he's talking about, but he's telling us a story. It's likely that this style of music is thousands of years old; Mali was purportedly founded by a group of hunters who were also ngoni-players and it's easier to imagine them toting around a jelingoni about two feet long rather than a donsongoni, which can be over five feet long and rather unwieldy. This hypnotic music reflects the region it is from almost perfectly. Not too far north of Segou the Sahara encroaches almost daily; daytime temperatures during hot season climb into the hundred-teens. It's not uncommon to watch people stretch out in rare patches of shade in the middle of the day and sleep."
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