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Salif Keita came into the world both cursed and blessed. With each new ordeal, its salvation; with each new obstacle, some inspired ruse or unstinting strength to continue his path. And here lies the enigma. For example, how could he accept being disowned by a father who refused the inevitability of an albino son? What reply could he give to face the hostility of his own caste when he, a Keita, chose to become a musician? The domain he was entering was strictly forbidden to the Mandingo nobles to whom he belonged. If living means knowing how to solve paradoxes, then Salif Keita is more alive than any of us. Having black parents, but being born white; bearing both a king’s name and the burden of a beggar’s fate… those are extremely discordant experiences, capable of either destroying a soul or of making it invincible. Yet with Salif things didn’t stop there. This miraculous, wild and solitary survivor also became the most emblematic artist in a whole continent. And today, with the appearance of his new album M’Bemba, he’s established himself as the artisan of a renaissance in traditional African sounds, even though he’s spent the best part of his career elsewhere, in Europe and The United States, in search of his musical salvation. This is his destiny, and it is not a common one.
In the Sixties, when he made his debuts in the Rail Band and the Ambassadeurs, the two most influential orchestras on the local scene in Mali, African music was undergoing the greatest transformation in its entire history. Carried by the inspiration of cultural emancipation, and submitting to the outside attractions of modern trends from America and Europe, the music was changing all the more quickly due to the importing of new instruments – especially amplified guitars – and the new technology capable of recording them. Salif took to this unstable, breathtaking climate like a fish to water. His voice, a baroque, ultra-powerful organ whose muscles he’d developed chasing larks and baboons from the family’s maize crops, was already the most magnetic instrument in the country. His thirst for new horizons was insatiable. In addition, he had a taste for meeting new people. His encounter with Kanté Manfila, the guitarist from Guinea, was one of the most profitable. In 1972, it was under Manfila’s wing – he was leading the Ambassadeurs du Motel band at the time – that Salif took refuge after leaving the Rail Band, who were residents at the Buffet de la Gare in Bamako. Unlike the Rail Band, whose repertoire was made up mostly of traditional Mandingo songs, the Ambassadeurs flattered all kinds of genres, with a predilection for Cuban music even though they also favoured French and English pop, American soul, Argentinean tango or accordion-waltzes... Salif suckled at all of those breasts. He quickly grew, too quickly in a Mali where he was already beginning to feel cramped. In 1979, still with Manfila, he went into exile in Abidjan – then the hub of West African music – and recorded Mandjou, the first Mandingo hit of the modern era. He then went to Washington, where Manfila and Salif produced Primpin, a song whose words were as scandalous (‘alcohol’ and ‘drugs’ were in the lyrics!) as the sound was revolutionary. It was an absolute smash hit. The renegade became a star, and in 1987 his album Soro established the Afro Pop concept. Four years later, Amen, with appearances by Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Carlos Santana, showed how perfectly Salif had become acclimatised in the land of contemporary music’s great mammals.
