| $13.41
back in stock as of
february 16th, 2009
first in stock on
january 16th, 2009
threads:
folk
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| | | yaala yaala (usa) #yy 005 cd yoro sidibe “yoro sidibe” compact disc - untitled (1) (27:14)
- untitled (2) (25:18)
- untitled (3) (19:31)
| | april 2008 release ; three takes of donsongoni magic from yoro sidibe ... |
| | yaala yaala press release... |
| | 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. |
returned not long ago from mali with my friend paul oldham. we had a wonderful time during our painfully short stay, a time compromised to some extent by the preponderence of wifi access and our having a teeny little old mac notebook which to tote around, incessantly distracted by the temptation of the internets.
it was also an intense visit for your truly. i hadn't been back since we left in 2000. bamako hadn't changed much as far as i could tell. stepped out of the plane into that soft malian night, smelled the smell of a million campfires burning, at least a few of them containing tires, and immediately beset upon by people trying only to help, in their way...
end result though is very exciting. yaala yaala was able to speak face to face with the incredible malian artist yoro sidibe, a donsongoni player. if you've heard this ancient type of hunter's music before then you know how intense and interesting it can be. if you've never heard it you're in for treat, an especially exciting one inasmuch as yoro is the king of ths type of music, almost literally. he's 70 now and is the chief of the malian federation of hunter musicians.
yeah, we're going 100 percent legaux, whatever the hell that means. i have an opinion on the constant patting-themselves-on-the-back vibe of the malian record industry (anti piracy, 100 percent legaux) meanwhile midlevel producers and "managers" still seem to me to be the worst pirates...more on that later.
we're angling for an april release. this'll be a hot one, folks, so get ready...
..
go ask your local purveyor of music if they have the latest yaala release: yoro sidibe. it's exciting music, some of my favorite music from mali. intense, loping, rhythmic donsongoni music by the acknowledged master of the form.
if you live in segou, mali--or you know someone who does--please write us! we have an interesting proposition...
in 1999 i moved with my wife and young son to bougouni, a town on the edge of mali’s culturally rich wassulu region. i’d listened to and enjoyed such malian musical imports oumou sangare, ali farka toure, salif keita, toumani diabite and habib koite while still living in the states and was excited to get to mali to learn more about these and other artists.
i learned very quickly that there was a huge gulf between what many people out in bougouni listened to and what was being exported to the west; many local malians made dismissive sounds with their mouths when i mentioned the above musicians. many of the cassette vendors i got to know stared blankly when i asked about certain artists.
i began to suspect that much of the music i’d heard back in the states was almost created for export rather than for local consumption, and whether or not this was objectively true did not matter. from my perspective it was true. out en brousse, in the bush, on radio banimotie and blaring forth from battery-driven boomboxes and handheld radios carried by any number of people wandering through southern mali, there existed an entirely different world of music and sound that i found infinitely more interesting and exciting than the slick pop music made in french, british or belgian studios.
much of this music was home-grown music performed locally for little else beyond an immediate audience’s enjoyment; it was traditional or folk music but in the hands of the endlessly inventive and dynamic local musicians it exemplified the best qualities of the do-it-yourself attitude that i’d grown up with back home.
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!
— jack carneal
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