{"id":48541,"date":"2020-05-11T14:58:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-11T13:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/paris-cest-lafrique-griots-et-rebelles\/"},"modified":"2023-01-03T16:38:29","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T14:38:29","slug":"paris-cest-lafrique-the-griots-the-rebelles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/paris-cest-lafrique-the-griots-the-rebelles\/","title":{"rendered":"Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique: \u201cThe griots and the rebels\u201d (episode 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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PAM is pleased to present the third episode of the <\/b>Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique<\/i><\/b> series by Philippe Conrath (1989) via our YouTube channel. A nosedive into Mandingo culture, its griots and its rebels. We meet this time with Mory and Manfila Kant\u00e9, Salif Ke\u00efta, Alpha Blondy, Nahawa Doumbia\u2026<\/b><\/h4>\n

\u201cThe whites invented the tape recorder, the television and the radio\u2026 but nothing can replace a griot,\u201d<\/i> says Kant\u00e9 Manfila, the great guitarist and arranger who, among other things, was a godsend for the band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako. In this episode of Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique<\/i>, he stresses the importance of a lineage of which he and Mory Kant\u00e9 are the heirs to. Mory then goes on to experience huge success with his song \u201cY\u00e9 K\u00e9 Y\u00e9 K\u00e9\u201d all over Europe, holding position at the top of the charts for like, forever. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe such success was happening to me, an African, a griot\u2026\u201d<\/i> Mory Kant\u00e9 says, deeply moved. Almost twenty years earlier, he joined the Orchestre Rail-Band as a balafon player, before replacing Salif Ke\u00efta<\/a> on lead vocals. In the documentary, Kant\u00e9 Manfila rejoins the rivalry between the Rail-Band and Les Ambassadeurs, pitting griot Kant\u00e9\u2019s talent for penning lyrics, against the unforgettable voice of the rebel Salif Ke\u00efta. Young Salif was indeed a de facto rebel, as his highborn status made it forbidden to sing or play any instrument \u2013 he was a descendant of the Emperor of the Mali Empire, Sundiata Keita.<\/p>\n

At home with Salif Ke\u00efta\u2019s father, in Djoliba <\/b><\/h5>\n

And then Salif\u2019s father appears on the screen. Rare footage, if not never-before-seen. We are in the village of Djoliba, on the edge of the Niger river, where Salif grew up. His old man, dressed in a traditional hunter\u2019s outfit, equipped with a flyswatter and a gun, recalls the time when Salif \u201cplayed hide-and-seek so he could go and play the guitar\u201d<\/i> without his father catching him. A few decades later, Salif is in Paris, and his career is booming. His most recent album Soro<\/i>, released by Syllart, and arranged by Fran\u00e7ois Br\u00e9ant and Jean-Philippe Rykiel, achieves huge success. In Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique<\/i>, he recounts his arrival in France: \u201cI found myself in front of a wall, and this wall was show business. But I had no hammer to break this wall. It was not with strength I needed to break it, but experience and knowledge of this new environment.\u201d<\/i> And this is precisely what Salif did in Paris, Philippe Conrath reckons thirty years on: \u201c[In Paris] Salif is forced to build a new relationship with time. Here you can\u2019t publish songs longer than three minutes, and \u2018Mandjou\u2019 is ten-minute long!\u201d<\/i> On screen, Salif continues: \u201cHere, you have to get to the crux of the matter quickly. You end up learning things that can be useful for you, and you can take them back home. If you have both [the Mandingo tradition and this Western way of working], then it\u2019s great!\u201d<\/i> The same motive brought another rebel to the French capital. His name: Seydou Kon\u00e9, aka Alpha Blondy.<\/p>\n

Abidjan and Bougouni two neighborhoods in \u2026 Paris<\/b><\/h5>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He came into Paris in the same way as he\u2019d step out in Marcory \u2013 a suburb of Abidjan \u2013, with the possibility now to step back to escape a country where he was already too famous. And the philosopher who has a way with words tells us this is what crossbreeding is. A reality that France took a long time to come around to \u2013 if it actually ever did: Blondy is a \u201ccultural mestizo\u201d<\/i>, made up of multiple identities each with their own languages \u2013 French, English, Malinke. He is all of this at once, and he likes to say he conjugates \u201cthe verb \u2018to be Alpha Blondy\u2019 in the first person\u201d<\/i>! His words are accompanied by the video for \u201cSweet Fanta Diallo\u201d, shot in France, and you can still feel the enthusiasm shared through the screen.<\/p>\n

The film ends in Bamako, at the home of another rebel, this time hailing from the Wassoulou region. We arrive in Bougouni, in the Sikasso region, in the south of Mali. We visit Nahawa Doumbia, the female singer who, like Salif, was not permitted to sing. What a shame this would have been. Accompanied by a guitar, surrounded by a group of kids, she presents the film with its conclusion and a moment of grace. Not long after, she would be producing with Cobalt \u2013 the label that Philippe Conrath revived in 1989, a few months before founding the Africolor festival.<\/p>\n

In 2019, for Africolor\u2019s 30th anniversary, Conrath rediscovered the footage he had buried in a dark corner of his mind, and told PAM: \u201cWhen I watched these again, I realized that this is my whole life. These musicians, this culture and this music established my profession, and helped to create my business. It is thanks to Mory Kant\u00e9 that I set up my company, Cobalt, because he had asked his editor Francis Kert\u00e9kian to give me a percentage of \u201cY\u00e9 K\u00e9 Y\u00e9 K\u00e9\u201d\u2018s publishing rights, as a thank-you for a favor I had done for him. I didn\u2019t have to take on a debt to launch my label: my bank was Mory Kant\u00e9!\u201d<\/i> Can a griot finance a rebel?! To achieve these kinds of results, you have to operate on the renewable energy of human interaction. And that\u2019s the same energy you feel running through Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Discover <\/b>Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique<\/i><\/b>\u2018s other episodes:<\/b><\/p>\n

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  1. The Pioneers<\/b><\/a><\/li>\n
  2. The Many Ways of Mbalax<\/b><\/li>\n
  3. The Griots and the Rebels<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n
     <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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    \"\"
    Kant\u00e9 Manfila et Salif Ke\u00efta – Droits R\u00e9serv\u00e9s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    PAM is pleased to present the third episode of the Paris c\u2019est l\u2019Afrique series by Philippe Conrath (1989) via our YouTube channel. A nosedive into Mandingo culture, its griots and its rebels. We meet this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7833,9402,9403],"tags":[531,3804],"location":[],"yst_prominent_words":[8403,10920,8799,10915,8932,8414,8447,10095,8402,8435,8797,8795,10914,8800,10092,10091,8412,8543,10918,10919],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48541"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=48541"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=48541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}