African Guitar Gods: Djelimady Tounkara, transposing tradition

You should be glad that Djelimady Tounkara didn’t become a tailor. Surely his dexterous fingers would have woven a beautiful stitch, but we wouldn’t be blessed with his legendary guitar playing.

Humble beginnings

Our African Guitar Gods series continues with the spotlight on this Malian guitarist. Like Ali Farka Toure, Franco, and Tinariwen, Tounkara has humble roots. He tended sheep when he was young, and thought he’d be a tailor when he moved from his hometown to Bamako, the capital of Mali. But culturally, his lineage is rich. Tounkara is a griot, a member of the oral storytelling class in West Africa. He grew up surrounded by music and learned to play the djembe and ngoni. When he moved to Bamako, he established himself as a guitarist adept at transposing the music of traditional instruments and blending it with popular Cuban and Congolese rhythms. Before long, Tounkara became the lead guitarist in Mali’s state- sponsored Rail Band.

Strengthening those around him

The Rail Band is arguably Mali's most legendary group. Formed in 1970, the band played regularly in the Bamako train station hotel and showcased the music of Mali for travelers and locals alike. Salif Keita kicked off his career as lead singer for the Rail Band in the early '70s. When he left the group, Mory Kanté took over as lead singer. Both these vocalists are now well known around the world. Tounkara wove his guitar solos around their soaring vocals, punctuating their great talent.

Of course, Tounkara was famous in his own right. He was invited to play with some Cuban musicians on the project that became Buena Vista Social Club, but visa problems prevented that collaboration. Fourteen years after BVSC, the originally invited musicians were brought together as a super group called AfroCubism. Watch him collaborating with them and then launching into a wicked guitar solo at the 1:30 mark.

Deified by critics and fans

When Tounkara released his first solo album, Sigui, in 2002, Amazon.com said, “Tounkara's brilliance has been apparent for decades; with this record his position as one of the world's greatest guitarists becomes undeniable.”

Mondomix exclaims, "...simply one of the world's most gifted guitar players, fluid and inventive in the extreme. He's shown many times that he can transform traditional music into modern gold...ideas spring, fully-formed, from his fingertips. There's not a wrong move or a dull moment, [he] sparkles."

Here he is playing “Sigui” with Bill Frisell.

And probably most flattering, music journalist Banning Eyre spent several months in Mali in 1995, studying under Tounkara and writing about his experiences in the book In Griot Time. He describes the feeling of studying with Tounkara as like "reaching into a rushing stream of water hoping to pull out a fish before it slithered away forever."

Eyre glorifies Tounkara throughout the book.

“Djelimady Toundara has powerful hands. His muscled fingers and palms seem almost brutish to the eye, but when he grasps the neck of a guitar and brushes the nail of his right index finger across the strings, the sound lifts effortlessly, like dust in a wind. In Bamako, Mali, where musicians struggle, Djelimady is a big man, and all of his family's good fortunes flow from those hands.”

This jam is insane.