Piers Faccini & Ballaké Sissoko: Our Calling review – voice and kora duo's gorgeous songs of longing
Faccini's high, reedy vocals are not the sturdiest, but he's in robust form here. The songs are packed with longing, whether the pull of another country, a return home or a lost love. One Half of a Dream is impatient to go, blown along by Sissoko's gusting kora, while Mournful Moon and North and South are steeped in desert blues. A different mood comes with Ninna Nanna, an Italian folk song that's the only piece not in English, its staccato lyrics leavened by Ségal's cello. Borne on the Wind is an ode to the wind under bird's wing that doubles as a paean to lost love – 'the light of her song long gone'. Gorgeous stuff.
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Scotsman
4 days ago
- Scotsman
Sissoko, Segal, Parisien & Peirani at EIF: the unlikely quartet where egos are 'out of the window'
If you're looking for genre-busting combos you'll be hard-pressed to find anything more eclectic than this quartet, writes Jim Gilchrist Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Its patent diversity may suggest an ensemble put together by a well-meaning cultural affairs committee: take one Malian kora player, add an eclectically-minded cellist, a leading jazz saxophonist and a similarly venturesome accordionist. The result, however, far from emerging as an ungainly musical camel, is a uniquely collaborative quartet producing beguiling music that eloquently, gleefully defies categorisation. The quartet Sissoko, Segal, Parisien and Peirani bring their potent musical melting pot to the Edinburgh International Festival next month, as part of the festival's series of folk, jazz and world music recitals at The Hub. It's their first visit as a quartet, although kora player Ballaké Sissoko and cellist Vincent Segal performed at the festival in 2021. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Vincent Peirani (accordion), Ballaké Sissoko (kora), Émile Parisien (sax) and Vincent Segal (cello) Sissoko and Segal established their unlikely seeming partnership in the early Noughties. Sissoko, master of the glittering, 21-stringed kora or harp-lute, comes from a long line of Malian griots – hereditary tradition-bearers and praise musicians; while Segal is a French cellist steeped in everything from baroque to trip-hop. Their first album together, Chamber Music, became a surprise bestseller in Europe and North America. The other half of the quartet is also an established musical partnership. Soprano saxophonist Émile Parisien is a major figure in French jazz and beyond, steeped in jazz traditions while exploring way beyond them, while Vincent Peirani is a similarly barrier-breaking accordionist who long ago stepped out of the confines of the musette music normally associated with the accordion in France. Their frequent joint appearances can find the pair playing anything from a classic rag with American jazz statesman Wynton Marsalis to Led Zeppelin numbers. As a quartet, Sissoko, Segal, Parisien and Peirani released their first album in 2023, titling it Les Égarés, which can be translated as 'the lost ones', but here means 'the wanderers', as Parisien emphasises, speaking from his home outside Paris: 'It's 'lost' but in a poetic way. You know when you are walking in the city or in a forest, just walking without thinking where you are going – just floating.' The album's title track, written by Segal, is La Chanson des Égarés, typical of the group's rich tapestry of contrasting tones, cello sometimes percussive, sometimes sonorous over thrumming strings, the round-toned singing of Parisien's soprano sax contrasting with glittering fusillades of notes from the kora. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In contrast, there's Esperanza, a perky, accordion-led café tune, while Peirani and Sissoko work up a dramatic pulse to power an acoustic re-imagining of Joe Zawinul's Orient Express as saxophone and melismatic cello sing out. And in one Peirani composition, Nomad's Sky, kora, plucked cello then accordion generate a brooding, torrid mood before soprano sax breaks out with a plangent, Middle-Eastern sounding solo. 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An accordion virtuoso who included covers of Marilyn Manson and the Nine Inch Nails on his album Jokers, and who habitually performs barefoot, Peirani emphasises the 'two duos' origins of the ensemble: 'It has been really good for all of us. In my case I'm used to playing with Émile, but now we've two people more, like a duo extended, and I think for Vincent and Ballaké it's the same.' The effect of the collaboration rubs off, Peirani finds, even when he and Parisien are back together as a duo: 'These past few weeks I played a lot as a duo with Émile an it was funny because we took the same repertoire we've been playing for many years but these last few weeks we've been playing it completely differently. After each show we look at each other and say, 'Mmm, this is the Les Égarés influence.'' 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BBC News
07-04-2025
- BBC News
Amadou Bagayoko - thousands attend funeral of Malian musician
Thousands of people gathered in Mali on Sunday for the funeral of musician Amadou Bagayoko, of the world-renowned duo Amadou & relatives, fans and fellow artists flocked to the ceremony in the capital city of Bamako - including the musician Salif Keita and former prime minister Moussa of the most successful African musical act of the 2000s, husband and wife duo Amadou & Mariam achieved global fame by combining West African influences with rhythm and breakthrough album, 2004's Dimanche à Bamako, sold half a million copies worldwide and led to collaborations with Blur's Damon Albarn, as well as appearances at the Glastonbury and Coachella festivals. Mali's culture minister, Mamou Daffé, said on state TV that Bagayoko had died on Friday in the city of Bamako, aged 70. The musician's family confirmed the news, adding that he "had been ill for a while".No further information was given on the cause of death, but his widow, Mariam Doumbia, described her husband's last moments."I took his hand and tried to make some movements with it, but it didn't move," she said."I said: 'Amadou, don't do this, speak to Mariam... but he didn't speak any more."The musician was taken to hospital, where he subsequently died."I thought that, if Amadou went just like that, then me, I'm alone," Doumbia added. "I was alone and I will remain alone in life." Franco-Spanish star Manu Chao, who produced Dimanche à Bamako, led tributes to Bagayoko in a post on Instagram, saying: "We will always be together... Wherever you go."Mariam, Sam, the whole family, your pain is my pain. I love you," he Malian singer Sidiki Diabate lamented "another immense loss for Malian music".Youssou N'Dour said he considered Amadou & Mariam to be "the ambassadors of African music almost everywhere in the world".Speaking to France's TV5 Monde, he said Bagayoko had pursued his career with "a dignity and a way of life that inspired us all... and encouraged us in what we were doing". Inventor of 'Afro-rock' Born in Bamako in 1954, Bagayoko went blind when he was 15 because of a congenital cataract. He subsequently enrolled at Mali's Institute for the Young Blind, where he met his future wife, Mariam, who had lost her vision at the age of five after contracting measles. They formed a band called Mali's Blind Couple in 1980, and moved to the neighbouring Ivory Coast in 1986, having realised that Mali's under-developed music industry would be a hindrance to their they recorded a series of cassettes, pairing Doumbia's soulful voice with Bagayoko's powerful guitar style, inspired by British acts like Led Zeppelin and Pink aim, Bagayoko said, was to "find a link between them and our Bambara culture". He christened the sound "Afro-rock". Their lives were changed when Manu Chao heard one of their songs on the radio and offered to produce their next ended up co-writing and singing on the record, adding eccentric rhythmical touches to their brand of desert result was Dimanche à Bamako, which won both the Victoire de la Musique - France's equivalent to a Grammy Award - and the BBC Radio World Music Award in follow-up, 2008's Welcome to Mali, was nominated for best contemporary world music album at the record was produced by Damon Albarn, who had invited the duo to take part in his Africa Express project in 2007, and invited them to tour with Blur during their 2009 reunion Shears of Scissor Sisters was also a fan, and took Amadou & Mariam on the road with his band in 2012. "What they do hearkens back to classic rock and real musicianship," he told The Times as the tour kicked off. "Now with all bands, when you're playing live, everybody's got backing tracks going on. Everyone's working with a net. They are a proper old-school rock band." In 2009, they played in Oslo as Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize; and in 2011 staged a series of concerts in the dark, to show audiences how they experienced music. A year later, they decided to record two versions of their sixth album Folila - one in New York and one with traditional musicians in Bamako. The idea was to release each separately but, in the end, the duo decided to combine the recordings, mixing different takes of the same song together in a third studio in contributions from Santigold, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and TV On The Radio, it earned the group a second Grammy nomination in 2012.2017's La Confusion, addressed the political turmoil in their homeland, where Islamic extremists had imposed Shariah law and banished like Bofou Safou offered messages of strength, resistance and optimism amidst the turmoil. Bagayoko said he hoped the music was universal"We started to work on the things that were happening in our homeland, but then realised that they could be applied to a lot of other countries in the world," he told OkayAfrica. "There is a confusion all over the world, and it's time to communicate, to talk and share ideas for a better future and understanding."The duo continued to record and tour until last year. Bagayoko's final performance came at the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Paralympic of Sunday, the duo's website still listed dates for a European tour in May and is survived by his wife and a son, Sam, also a "will be buried in family intimacy in the courtyard of his home", his spokesman Djiby Sacko told the AFP news agency.
