BBC - Radio 3 - Awards for World Music 2005

ROKIA TRAORE (MALI)

Full track details

The tacit expectations of audiences and critics often weigh heavy on musicians who want to be different. Rokia Traore is assailed by expectations from all sides. The non-African contingent naturally expect her to fulfill her role as a young female diva from Mali, with requisite obeisance to reassuring traditions and familiar grooves. African audiences expect her to be the chart-bound griotte she most emphatically is not.

The fact is that Rokia Traore has a past and an outlook that defy expectations, and she goes against the grain with resolute courage and even relish. The effusive reactions to her latest CD "Bowmboi", released by Label Bleu, and to her live performances, especially during her recent inaugural 2004 tour of the USA and Canada, all seem to infer that Rokia Traore represents something of a paradigm shift in West African music. We're no longer dealing with a singer who has been almost entirely marinaded in some local griot or dance band tradition and who arrives in the west looking for the right producer to clothe their sublime voice in cosmopolitan robes of sophistication and modernity.

Rokia has always had her own particular vision of how her music should sound. It was born out of a youth as a sax-playing diplomat's daughter and life in the embassies and consulates of Brussels, Riyadh, Paris and Algiers, with the concomitant loneliness and isolation that provided fertile ground for writing songs and poems, and dreaming of becoming a great singer.

By her late teens Rokia's musicals heroes were already well established; Tina Turner, Satchmo, Serge Gainsbourg, Dire Straits, er Pink Floyd, Joe Cocker. Great Malian griottes like Ami Koita and Fanta Damba were also role models, but unlike them, Rokia was free to roam outside the griot tradition and construct her own musical language. She did this with unique verve and originality on her first two albums "Mouneissa" and "Wanita"', the latter harvesting a crop of 'Album Of The Year 2001' plaudits in publications as diverse as fRoots and The New York Times.

Her spacious and subtle concoctions of traditional instruments like the kora, balafon or ngoni, her own unique and unquantifiable voice and her original songs and compositions, all added up to something proudly African and Malian and yet unmistakably new. This is the third time Rokia has been nominated in the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music. We can safely expect to continue expecting the unexpected.

Ivan Chrysler (courtesy of fRoots)

Selected concert audio from WOMAD 2004
Video footage from R3 Awards 2004
Bowmboi album review
Rokia Traore official website

Your Comments

FATIM HIPODROME 2 BAMAKO MALI
I am very happy for Rokia Traore, because of her Award, am tottally happy for her, she is a very in telligent womman and i wish best of luck again in her life, kiss

Houd, Jordan
Rokia is an outstanding singer. Her music leaves me with the feeling of being somewhere on the moon. She the best of this generation.

billal,leipzig,germany
I am glad that am an african.mbifo,how should i define it? Damn jus a rich musical progression.forget it the whole album is damn rich.since i got it i been listening to it everyday,ohhh!!! what an artist

Bryan UK
Rokia has the lot. Words like no-one else sings, beautiful expressive tender voice,thrilling musical intelligence and a universal presence. She's a star.

Famara Jammeh,Rhode Island,USA
Rokia's music is full of soul as well as empowering.Am Gambian and don't understands what she sings,but her songs and music feels like something I've been used to my whole life.

Christopher Lesotho
Best Musik for me!

moji-Canada
I liked her voice and her music. Although I couldn`t understand her words,I enjoyed the song and that`s why I vote for her! Good luck Rokia Traore!!

silkbreeze
her music touches my soul....and compels me to dance and share in her magic...wild elegance

Kiembeni Austria
SHE IS THE NEW voice from Mali after Oumou Sangare. This is real African music.

Richard Dorrell
It also features some of the most apt- and complexly written- political songs: the literary genius in "Sara" and "Kanou" in particular are only matched by some of the works of the late jalimosulu Siramori Diabate, who didn't have Traore's virtuosity on the guitar.

nikola g. temerin, serbia
beautiful songs. she is new malian and world music diva.bowmboi album is one of the best introspective albums(souad massi-deb is also)in last ten years.