3MA - Three Sons of Africa
As I write this, my newly-acquired "3MA" CD is playing in the background. Last night we went to their concert in Brussels, and it was pure joy. This marriage of oud (by Moroccan Driss El Maloumi), kora (Ballake Sissoko, from Mali), and valiha (Rajery, playing the bamboo zither of Madagascar) is "world music" of a natural classicism. Played at the Flagey auditorium - the acoustically updated and wonderfully art deco original home of RTBF, francophone Belgium's broadcaster - "3MA" was a surefire crowd-pleaser. And we have some particularly bright cultural diplomats to thank for introducing them outside of Africa.
Each of the three musicians is a "star" in his own right. Rajery, the wiry Malgache with a golden voice to boot, is a self-taught musician who was trained as an accountant. Too bad for the green-eye-shade crowd, but lucky for music lovers, Rajery has devoted himself to the valiha. He started a 23-member orchestra for the instrument, a national festival in its honor, and has founded a music school for street children. He's made four albums. Oh yes - and he has only one hand.
Driss El Maloumi, the oud player, has a following of his own, and has collaborated with Catalan ancient music virtuoso Jordi Saval and Hesperion XXI, as well as other international artists from Francoise Atlan to Iran's Keyvan Chemirani. Driss is the anchor of the trio, and something of a wit and a poet. He leads an amusing scat piece the group calls "African Political Speeches," which is equally effective as political satire: "plenty of dissonance, and lots of false notes."
Mali's Ballake Sissoko hails from a musical griot family, and his father co-founded the Ensemble Instrumental du Mali. Sissoko's evocation of his daughter, Kadiatou, is a perfect vehicle for the versatile kora, essentially a massive gourd with 21 strings.
This joyous amalgam of music from three corners of Africa is the fruit of a somewhat chance encounter at the Timitar Festival in Agadir Morocco in 2006. Three French cultural center directors - in the respective capitals of the three musicians - helped nurture what would come to be called 3MA: Mali, Madagascar, Maroc. Belgian producer Michel De Bock, of the label Contre-Jour, worries a little about the MA of Maroc not fitting into "the anglo saxon, where it's Morocco... But once they hear the album or see a concert, they'll be sure to fall for them."
I certainly hope so, though a quick look at 3MA's tour schedule doesn't show any anglophone countries (though they have already played at several venues in anglophone Africa) in the near future. And as a former diplomat who sometimes dabbled in cultural diplomacy, hats off to the French Cultural Centers of Bamako, Agadir, and Antananarivo for introducing us to this fusion of African music (the Ford Foundation has assisted through "Art Moves Africa").
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