Diabate

The master of modern Mandingo guitar, co-founder and soloist of Guinea's Bembaya Jazz, Sekou Diabate is the inventor of a unique style, which has influenced and inspired all the guitarists on the African continent. For this album, this lyrical, sensual, always inspired and outstanding musician on a par with B.B. King, has engaged in a brilliant rereading of his great classics, along with some Bembaya Jazz pieces. A lesson in swing and emotion.

A native of Thiero, in the region of Faranah in the Guinean Highlands, Sékou Diabaté is a self-taught musician trained in the tradition since childhood. He soon took a passion for the guitar, forging a characteristic, unique and inimitable style inspired by the kora and balafon - the king instruments of Mandingo music - as well as all the music styles he heard on the radio. Like all the young people of his generation he was tuned in to Cuban music, jazz, blues and chanson française, therefrom developing his own personal synthesis, in the service of a very strong musical identity.

As of the start - at the time of independences - he has been the solo guitarist and central hub of a band that has revolutionized West African urban music: the Bembaya Jazz, founded in 1961, which became Guinea's leading band at the time of Sekou Toure, the country's first president, both a despot and patron for the new republic. The band has owed its success, reputation and influence on all African bands to its singers (among whom the late Aboubacar Demba Camara and Sékouba Bambino, who now continues a solo career) and, above all, to the flamboyant, lyrical solos of its guitarist -nicknamed "Diamond Fingers" following a memorable Bembaya Jazz performance at the Lagos Fespac (first Pan-African arts festival) in 1977.

As talented as he is modest, Sékou Diabaté has seldom recorded in his own name. He has taken the opportunity of a sojourn in France, in-between the Bembaya's latest European dates and their US and Canada tour, to make this album featuring some Bembaya musicians as well as the singer Safiata Condé, very popular in Conakry and West Africa, who appears on two songs.

This CD presents original compositions along with some classic pieces from the Bembaya Jazz repertoire. It is serene, peaceful and full of nostalgia. Sekou has worked on his guitar's sound and phrasing as he never had before. The clear, elegant versions of Guitar Fö, Diamond Fingers, Bala Koura and Wati are the works of a master, a mature musician in full possession of his means, who never shows off his virtuosity but favours the colours of his guitar - "the sole woman in his life" as he says with a smile.