Mango rains…

So, life in Bamako has been busy and as our time in the city comes to an end the music just gets better. We are on a high. Now it’s the end of another mad day and as our beds call us we feel it’s time for an overdue update, in photo form!

Its April, the weather is hot, sometimes the temperature reaches a scorching 45 degrees. Walking from to the kitchen and back makes you sweat. We both sleep and I begin a folder of photos entitled ‘Mikaela naps through the hot season’…

Our friend Sadio Cissokho arrives from Senegal with his kora to work on the album. Sadio is a creative kora player, arranger and soulful singer. Together with Mikaela’s kamele ngoni teacher, Lassine Kone, we jam with Sadio for the first time since we met him in Casamance. Our musical high begins…

The band meet Sadio and one of our best rehearsals follow. We rehearse at Baini’s house and a crowd gathers. The children dance madly to the music and the sky grows stormy. There’s talk of mango rain.

A mango storm hits the city and as the rehearsal ends the sky is lit up with sheet lightening. We head home on flooded roads as the first rain we have seen in more than 6 months pours onto the dusty streets. We grin and laugh as we paddle through the water back to the house. Beautiful rain, perfect day.

Sounds from Ziguinchor…

After our extended stay with Jaliba Kuyateh we planned to whizz through Ziguinchor to try to reach Mali sooner. But the music of Ziguinchor kept us and we found ourselves staying much longer than planned! Because of some camera issues we couldn’t take any photos, but we feel the sound recordings will do justice to our time there.

Meeting with Sadio Cissokho, a well-reputed kora player, was humbling, his kora playing is simply beautiful, but considering the musical nature of his family it’s no surprise. The family household is busy with the movements of its resident kora players and the young boys are all learning.

Sadio first played us ‘Maké’ a traditional song about the first king of Suni. Mikaela was keen to learn her first Mandinke song…

The tuning of Maké worked well with a lot of songs we knew and we didn’t want to make Sadio retune his 22-stringed instrument so we went straight into “Jonny was a shoemaker”.

Before making Sadio change tuning, we played another folk song, ‘Seven Little Gypsies’.

Finally Sadio retuned and I set my guitar up for lap slide, and we played on of his own pieces, ‘Nion saba’.

We left the city feeling inspired and with the beginnings of a music project that will bring together folk songs from home with the beautiful sound of Mande music.