Bassekou Kouyate

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Bassekou Kouyate is a musician from Mali, born in 1966 in Garana, sixty kilometres from Ségou. He comes from a family of griots, the storytellers and musicians of West Africa. His father Mustapha Kouyate played the ngoni, and his mother Yagaré Damba was a praise singer. He began playing the ngoni himself at the age of twelve. At the end of the 1980s he moved to Bamako. He played on albums by Toumani Diabaté and leads his own band, Ngoni ba.

Music and breakthrough

His debut album Segu Blue, produced by Lucy Durán, was released internationally in 2007. I Speak Fula followed in 2009, Jama Ko in 2013, Ba Power in 2015 and Miri in 2019. In 2010 he toured with Béla Fleck, and in 2013 he performed at the Proms in London with his wife Amy Sacko, who sings in the band. He is regarded as a master of the ngoni and as an important innovator of the instrument.

Influence

The ngoni is a Malian lute with strings that for a long time was mainly an accompanying instrument. Kouyate made it a solo instrument, with a band of several ngonis of different sizes, which together provide the bass, the rhythms and the solos. In this way he brought a centuries-old tradition to the concert halls of Europe, and he shows how a renowned griot family can make an old instrument sound modern.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 2006Segu Blue
• 2009I Speak Fula
• 2013Jama Ko
• 2015Ba Power
• 2019Miri
• 2024Djudjon (L'Oiseau De Garana)
• ?Bamako Calling