David Dalle
Thursday August 13th, 2015 with David Dalle
New music from Mali with Terakaft, Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba; one supreme musician's tribute to another.

Today we make another, frequent stop in Mali, with the Tuareg group Terakaft and their new album "Alone". There is bitterness, even anger that underlies this album, probably due to the ongoing tension and violence in Northern Mali, and that fanatical Islamisists (who are so antithetical to traditional West African Islam) have largely hijacked the Tuareg causes. The other new album from Mali is from Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, their new album "Ba Power" also shows a harder edge with the addition of several electric guitars, (both these albums adding more evidence that the best electric guitars are from West Africa). Though the heart of the group is still the Ngonis and the stellar singing from Amy Sacko. We also hear the new album from Fanfaraï, "Tani", a group founded by Algerian Samir Imal who wanted to transcribe popular Algerian music to a brass band format. Finally, we hear one supreme musician's tribute to another. Mozart's approach to the string quartet was completely shaped by Haydn's string quartets, and between 1782 and 1785 he composed 6 string quartets and dedicated them to Haydn (very unusual at this time for a dedicatee to be anther musician instead of an aristocratic patron). Mozart's entire conception of the string quartet owes everything to Haydn's quartets, particularly the Op. 20 and Op. 33 sets, the latter having been published in 1781. During this time, Mozart was new in Vienna and became good friends with Haydn, they even performed quartets together. Mozart's "Haydn quartets" were his tribute to the older master, and they were some of Mozart's greatest compositions and remain some of the greatest in the quartet repertoire. Today we hear the 3rd from the set, K428 in E flat, one of his most chromatic and forward looking quartets. Sublime.