Feb 17/05
Upgrade
I’ve upgraded the software that runs this site to WordPress 1.5. It seems to be working well, but if you notice any bugs please let me know.
In honour of this mis-a-jour I’m going to post a particularly beautiful kora piece by Toumani Diabate and Ballake Sissoko. We already heard Diabate on this site, but I’m in the mood so let’s just go with it.
This song is off their aptly-named 1999 album, New Ancient Strings. The album’s title is a play on the title of Sidiki Diabate and Djelimadi Sissoko’s classic album, Cordes Anciennes. The elder Diabate and Sissoko were famous for introducing Western music markets to the sound of the kora. This album is an attempt by their sons to keep the Malian kora tradition alive and well.
Toumani Diabate & Ballake Sissoko – Bi Lambam
Tags: kora, mali
Never change a runnig system…
I did it too but it’s working now.
where’s your sense of adventure?
Are you switching to WordPress 1.5? I did it a few days ago and it was very quick & painless. Here’s what you need to watch out for.
1. Don’t replace your index.php & stylesheets which contain the style & page layout of the site.
2. If you have anything in your wp-content folder don’t replace it, just copy the themes folder
3. Run the upgrade script before doing anything else.
4. Unless you enable themes (see the new index.php for details), the themes folder isn’t used and it will retain the same appearance.
This is the first track you’ve posted which I already own on CD. Great choice.
Your RSS feed no longer includes any of the article text — I appreciated that from the old system.
sorry – totally false. For some reason my aggregator just took a really long time to render the article contents. Too bad I can’t delete the previous posting.
Absolutey lovely Diabate. The magic of those fingers!
[...] When I was younger I played jazz trombone. This musical hobby was dropped quickly after I started college and moved into a series of horn-unfriendly apartments, but I still have a soft spot for the sound. I was happy, then, when Benn loxo listener Scott passed me a copy of Toumani Diabate and Roswell Rudd’s album, Malicool. [...]
Greetings, my husband (who is Gambian) introduced me to Toumani Diabate, and after hearing him, I went what I call “Rhapsody crazy” where I went online and tried to find everything I could get my hands on (legally speaking *smile*) to download and to put onto CD / my mp3 player. My husband and I have enjoyed the CD’s wev’e been able to find immensely. My husband describes kora music as “African classical music”, he states that many of the songs are centuries old, and are played widely. And he seems to know every note. He also states that the songs actually have words to them also, but at least on the Diabate CD’s, they songs are just instrumental. Anyway, I’m hoping that I don’t come off as “cheesy” or frivolous! I am just browsing through your archives and enjoying the posts immensely. Hope you are well.
That doesn’t sound cheesy at all, Ginny. I’ve been listening to an advance copy of Toumani Diabaté’s upcoming release (unfortunately I can’t post any tracks yet) and it’s beautiful. You could easily describe this new album in particular as “African classic music”.
Greetings Matt, I wasn’t aware that Toumani Diabate was coming out with a new CD, will keep my ears open. My husband also has cassettes (I think they were actually recordings made from Radio Gambia from many years ago), of traditioanl kora and balafon music (his mom enjoys listening to it). This is very traditioanl music, basically storytelling or singing about certain people or families. He’s got all kinds of stuff, I’m meaning to get a tape deck with a USB hook up (do they make those?) that I can hook up to the comptuer and convert those into mp3′s. Then I could put them onto CD. A lot of this stuff can never be replaced and many of the musicians/singers heard on these recordings are no longer living. Anyway, sorry to bore you with this, as I think you’ve alluded to before, this is the kind of music that people would play for entertainment and other gatherings, my husband tells me that when he was growing up, after diiner people would sit in their compounds and play music or talk, as there wasn’t any electricity and the only entertainment many times was the kora or other instruments. Anyway, won’t bore you any furhter, take care and keep up the good work with this site.