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Boubacar Traore is a harmonious contradiction, a musician whose art and biography are striking not so much for their balance as for their extremes. An idol for the whole west coast of Africa in the 1960s, forgotten in the 1970s, rediscovered in the 1980s, and now touring once again in Europe and, for the first time, in North America in the 1990s.
In the sixties, the people of Mali awoke each morning to his music on the radio. In the evening, they'd dance to it in clubs. They called him Kar Kar, from kari kari, meaning "one who dribbles too much". The name has stuck ever since those soccer-playing days. His big hit, Mali Twist, served as a kind of national anthem for the newly emerging country of Mali, in 1963. In the song he called upon his compatriots to rebuild the country after independence. He was regarded alternately as the Chuck Berry, the James Brown, the Elvis Presley and the Johnny Hallyday of Mali, but because there were no music royalties paid, he rarely had enough money in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He turned to other kinds of work - tailor, a salesman, agricultural agent - and his music became something shared only with a close circle of friends.
In 1987, he appeared on Malian television, surprising the whole country, many of whom mistook him for his older brother, also a musician, who indeed had died a few years before. When his beloved wife Pierette died suddenly that same year, Boubacar was lost in grief. He left for France, determined to earn enough money to support his 6 children at home. He worked construction jobs, and played guitar only within the African expatriate community there. A few years later a British record producer happened to hear a tape of a radio show Boubacar had performed on, and excitedly sent someone to Bamako to find him. The people in Bamako sent this emissary to Kayes, Boubacar's home village in western Mali. There he learned that Boubacar wasn't in Mali at all, but in Paris. They eventually tracked him down, and brought him to England to record two new albums. His career took on a new life. He toured in England, Switzerland, and Canada, and played select dates in the United States. Upon his return to Mali, a studio in Bamako, at the Revue Noir's initiative, produced his third album, Les Enfants de Pierette (Pierette's Children), with the participation of several big names in Malian music including Ali Farka Toure, Toumani Diabate and Ketetigul Diabate. Boubacar has continued to record new material and Rolling Stone magazine named his 2000 album Macire one of the top 50 albums of the year.
"If guitarist Ali Farka Toure is Mali's answer to John Lee Hooker, then Boubacar Traore is Mali's Robert Johnson," wrote one critic, and with good reason. The sense of rhythm, space and time in Boubacar's music cannot help but remind us of the seminal American blues figure. The roots of the music are in the distinctive Khassonke rhythms of the Kayes region in northwest Mali, but Arabic influences are also present. However, it would be a mistake to think he is simply a blues musician. Although there is a strong case to be made for connecting the historic links of American blues with the music from Mali, in fact the music of Mali incorporates a much broader spectrum than can be attributed to the branch that leads to our blues. To label him simply as a blues musician fails to recognize the magnificent traditions of this great African culture. If you do not take "blues" as a form of music, but rather as a description of a feeling, you begin to discover the key to Kar Kar and his music.
For Boubacar Traore, his melodies are songs to which the guitar sings the second vocal part. "The guitar has a magic attraction for me", he says in trying to describe his relationship with the instrument. He plays the guitar as if it were a kora, the 21 stringed harp that is so well known in Malian music.
In 2005 First Run Features will release to DVD the documentary film I'll Sing for You, a brilliant and touching portrait of Boubacar's life story directed by Jacques Sarasin and produced by Jonathan Demme. The film's soundtrack is availabe from Marabi Records. Harmonia Mundi's World Village label will release the brand new studio album Kongo Magni, featuring 10 new songs recorded in Bamako, on September 13. Boubacar will tour North America in September and October.
Boubacar is an artist who has affected an entire generation. His is the voice of a nation, its hopes and its fears. He is a storyteller, and his songs deal with daily living, the many facets of love, political conditions and solidarity. Sometimes they are small parables, resonant with meanings we'll never be able to understand, but clear to his friends. Perhaps the final words are best said by one of his peers, Ali Farka Toure: "If the maximum is five, I give ten to Kar Kar".
"If the maximum is five, I give 10 to Kar Kar."
-Ali Farka Toure
"If guitarist Ali Farka Toure is Mali's answer to John Lee Hooker, then Boubacar Traore is Mali's Robert Johnson."
-Tim Perlich, CMJ
"Traore coaxed a resonant, harpsichord-like tone out of his guitar, and was equally adept at picking out complex sets of chords with his fingers and spinning off deft, minor key runs that, although distinctly African in tone, would indeed fit in neatly with the Muddy Waters-Willie Dixon school of electric Chicago blues. Traore's vocals were equally compelling, delivered in a high, thin tenor that was ghostly on the ballads yet turned forceful and passionate on the more political songs, all of which were sung either in French or his native tongue."
-Michael Parrish, Chicago Tribune
"Boubacar Traore is a revelation... A plaintive evocative voice which stretches and climbs over threads of guitar melody."
-The Guardian, UK
"His gear and his music suggest a solitary bluesman, but far from the Las Vegas glitter, Boubacar Traore, accompanied by his warm dry voice, tears the notes from his guitar... An unforgettable African mirage crosses our minds. And already the Malian gives us a glimpse of slow dance steps, winding around his guitar like a tired dancer. Kar Kar meets his audience. To see him salute his public, hesitating whether to bring his hands to his face or to bow is already an experience on its own."
-Le Matin, Switzerland
"Boubacar, the humble Malian bluesman. A complaint carried by the tired arpeggio of an acoustic guitar, Africa sings its desolate countrysides. Simply beautiful."
-Le Nouveau Quotidein, Switzerland
"Next to Baaba Maal and Ali Farka Toure, the Malian singer Boubacar Traore plays authentic blues. And Europe rediscovers the essence, the passion and the sincerity of this music."
-Vibrations, Switzerland
"Boubacar Traore is like the father of the entire blues scene in Mali. He convinced me that the Mississippi takes its true source in the waters of the Niger River. Ousmane Sankare, Toumani Diabate as well as the young Lobi Traore and Habib Koite owe him a lot, even Baaba Maal in Senegal"
-Theirry Coljon, Le Soir, Belgium