Oumou Sangare returns to New York's Central Park Summerstage

 

Feature written by Hortense Fuller

 

Photography by William Farrington & Hortense Fuller

 

 

  
Mali's Oumou Sangare returned to Central Park Summerstage in June 2003 to participate in this season's "Year of the Blues" festival.  The Summerstage organizers chose this event to demonstrate the close links between the music of Mali's Wassolou region, Oumou Sangare's homeland, and American blues.  While the remainder of the "Year of the Blues" concert series focused on American heartland and delta blues (featuring Johnny Winter of Texas and the James Cotton Band of Mississippi), tonight's event focused on Malian music and featured both Oumou Sangare and Ramata Diakite.  

 
Oumou's performance at Central Park was riveting.  Drawing from her classic repertoire, Oumou’s tall and commanding presence dazzled and enticed the audience to get involved.  Throughout the performance, the crowd was clapping to the funky, guitar, kora and bass driven beat, while the djembe player added rhythmic fireworks to the musical stew.  
   

   
 The somewhat understated bass and guitar lines were enriched by the sound of traditional instruments from the Wassolou region including the kamel n'goni lutes and rattling calabashes.   

   
The two female vocalists would pick up calabashes with hundreds of cowry shells attached, and toss them back and forth over their heads, adding percussive depth and visual excitement to the stage show.  If the audience detected an essence of familiarity in Mali’s pentatonic music, it was due to the strong lien between American blues and its African origins.   
   

   

Oumou Sangare recorded her first solo album, “Djama Kaissoumou” in 1989, which was produced in Abidjan by Ibrahima Sylla.  The album surpassed all expectations reportedly selling an initial 200,000 copies.  This album was re-released by World Circuit Records in 1990 as “Moussolou”, setting the stage for a series of international tours throughout Europe and North America.  The interview which follows, conducted by AfricaSounds, catches Oumou Sangare at an exciting time in her career, just following the international release of "Worotan".  Oumou's thoughts were already clearly focusing on the subject matter for her forthcoming album "Ko Sira" - addressing feminist themes, in particular, polygamy.  That album was also released internationally on World Cicruit in 2000.  We now invite you to join us as we chat with Oumou Sangare and discover her intimate portrait circa 1997.

  
     

Moussolou (Original release 1989, international release 1990)  

Worotan (1997)

Ko Sira (2000)
   
[Interview, New York, NY 1997]: Oumou was taking the day off from a heavy touring schedule, and the break was a veritable luxury.  She explained in French, "as I have been working steadily for the past 11 months. Our present tour began on October 18th [almost a month ago] and we have had shows in Boston, Charlotte, Asheville and even a [double header] in Minneapolis." According to both Oumou and her promoter, "the tremendous response surprised us, it was beyond our expectations. Before we arrived at each show, the tickets were already sold out!" As we began our discourse, I remarked that Oumou Sangare represented the juxtaposition of the traditional and modern African woman.  Smart, opinionated, beautiful, successful and a spokeswoman for her people, Oumou has gone to great troubles to become one of Mali’s premier cultural ambassadors and also one of Africa’s most outspoken women's rights activists.  Although Oumou teaches and educates through her music, it wasn’t until I met her in person that I understood exactly why she is so successful.  
   

   
Oumou Sangare captivates her audience not only because of her inherent talent, but because she bridges the divide between traditional Africa and the cosmopolitan Africa. At the concert, I noticed Oumou the diva, who wore a beautiful traditional dress along with chic Parisian-style stilettos; at the interview I met Oumou the businesswoman, complete with her leather briefcase and electronic pocket organizer. A unity of all things present and traditional, Oumou is a modern African enigma and in some ways a contradiction unto herself.   While Oumou is knee-deep in the traditions of Mali, she is at the same time pushing ahead to change and progress the status of females in society.  
   

 
   
The past eleven months of touring provided Oumou with much to discuss with me over our lunch. Perhaps most notable was her recent experiences with the project, "Women in Africa," a showcase of four women, including bikutsi legend Sally Nyolo of Cameroon, which recently spent a week touring the Southern Africa region. Oumou explained "I adore the concept of "Women of Africa" because it takes four women from different societies in Africa, each with their own music, and shows the world that we can succeed in creating something together." The concept was so popular in Southern Africa that fans demanded, "Why haven’t you made an album together yet?" The result, explained Oumou, "will be a tour in England and quite possibly the group will collaborate on an album together."  
   

 
   
Oumou explained her experience with the group while in Swaziland. "We were performing before the King of Swaziland, who is the same age as me but already has seven wives, and his father had had thirty two! Now you know that Oumou sings against polygamy, I detest polygamy, so there I am ready to sing my music, and the King was sitting like this, directly in front of me, with three wives on one side, and four wives on the other. So I began to sing, "Polygamy is the pire [worst] of all things!" And there was nothing that he could do, and everyone cried out and couldn’t believe their ears!" Oumou paused at the table, a large smile across her face, and continued: "And each year, do you know that the King of Swaziland has all of the young girls, thousands of them, come out and dance, literally naked, in front of the King? And then he chooses one each year to become his wife, just as his father did!" The process continues, and every year he gains another wife like that... this is the polygamy that I sing out against."  
   

 
   
Oumou continued, "Polygamy is false, it is dishonest, and it is not a happy situation for the woman. Polygamy is the suffering of the woman. I was born at a unique moment in Mali’s history, as it was precisely this time when [the institution] of polygamy began to be challenged." Oumou explains "a man must love only one woman, he must respect his wife, and respect his children, with one hundred percent of his love and attention. Even if he dies, on the day that he is no longer there, his children will be better off and have less problems." As Oumou is a member of a younger generation of women in Mali who have begun to search for an alternative to the traditional polygamous way of living, she has become active and vocal in this mission. "With my music, I can spread the word, and I know I am strong enough for the battle. I know that we , the women of Mali, can reverse this trend. It is not for the whites to change, but polygamy is for us, ourselves, to challenge. I will fight polygamy until my death."  
   

 
   
The intensity of our conversation made me lose total track of time, and before we knew it lunch was over and both Oumou and myself had to get to other meetings. Oumou and her entourage were off to Canada that night, but before then she had some shopping to do in Manhattan. Eager for a hint of what we could expect in the future from Oumou, I questioned her about her next album. "Well, we have talked with the Kronos Quartet, who have many violins, and we will see if we can do a collaboration together. [Of course,] I don’t know if it will work, but we will try it together and perhaps something will come of it. But first, before any recordings, I must finish my touring. After this tour, we have North Africa, then onto London, and then East Africa including Kenya and Tanzania. After all this work, I will rest and spend time with my family, and only then will I begin the new album."  
   

 
   
Well, Oumou certainly has her work laid out for her, but there is little doubt that she will tackle her upcoming challenges with as much spark and success as in the past. And we can be certain that the next album from Oumou will be well worth the wait.  [Editor's note: Sangare's follow-up album, entitled "Ko Sira", was release in 2000 and addressed many of the issues highlighted above in the above interview]