David Dalle
Thursday April 10th, 2025 with David Dalle
New Salif Keita! New Ballaké Sissoko! 4.5 billion years in music!
Well, I bought too much new Malian music recently, said absolutely no one ever. Ballaké Sissoko formed a friendship with France-based English folk singer Piers Faccini over two decades. Piers Faccini has sung as a guest on a couple of songs on previous Sissoko recordings, and they have finally recorded a full album together. "Our Calling" is a delicate and beautiful album with mostly just the two of them, though a couple of songs feature longtime Sissoko collaborator, cellist Vincent Segal, as well as Badjé Tounkara on ngoni and North African Malik Ziad on guembri. Salif Keita returns with his first new album since his 2018 "Un Autre Blanc". This album is particularly special as it features mostly Salif Keita solo with just an acoustic guitar and his miraculous voice. He was reluctant to record solo as he claimed he was not really a guitarist, he just uses the guitar to compose. However, he was in Japan attending an arts festival and spent time in the stillness of a Zen temple, which inspired him to record. "So Kono", which translates to "in the room", recorded in his hotel room. It has a fantastic, immediate sound. Listening to this album on my stereo, it felt like Salif Keita was sitting right there. He is joined by Badjé tounkara on ngoni, Mamadou Kone on calabash, and Clément Petit on cello for two or three songs, but most of the album is just Salif Keita. It features some new songs as well as some solo acoustic versions of old favourites, including a solo version of my absolute favourite Salif Keita song "Laban". For a 75 year old musician who claimed he was retiring from music nearly a decade ago, I am so grateful he still graces us with such magnificent music as this!
| Aboubakrin Salif Keita - So Kono - No Format 
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| If Nothing Is Real Piers Faccini & Ballake Sissoko - Our Calling - No Format
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| I have the incredible privilege of seeing Ballaké Sissoko live in Ottawa two weeks ago, playing with his quartet Les Égarés. It was a phenomenal concert! Everything I had expected. You still have a chance to see Derek Gripper in Ottawa on April 27th, another concert not to be missed!
https://events.humanitix.com/derek-gripper-ottawa |
| Ninkoy Ballake Sissoko & Derek Gripper - Ballake Sissoko & Derek Gripper - Matsuli |
| Ninna Nanna Piers Faccini & Ballake Sissoko - Our Calling - No Format
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| Mournful Moon Piers Faccini & Ballake Sissoko - Our Calling - No Format
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| Mmlyiy Kan Les Abranis - Album No. 1 - We Want Sounds
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| A never-before-released recording of a concert Manu Dibango in Marseille in 1982, it featured an Dibango with an 8 piece band with Congolese guitarist Jerry “Bokilo” Malekani, drummer Brice Wassy, percussionist Valery Lobe, Jean-Pierre Coco on percussion, Hary Gofin on bass, pianist Del Rabenja and singers, Florence ‘Titty’ Dimbeng and Sissy Dipoko. |
| Waka Juju Part 1 Manu Dibango - Dibango 82 - We Want Sounds
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| Waka Juju Part 2 Manu Dibango - Dibango 82 - We Want Sounds
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| Waka Juju Part 3 Manu Dibango - Dibango 82 - We Want Sounds
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| Soundiata Salif Keita - So Kono - No Format
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| "Laban" is my favourite song of all of Salif Keita's repertoire. Originally from his 2005 album "M'Bemba", this solo acoustic version is magnificent! |
| Laban Salif Keita - So Kono - No Format
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| For the second hour, we will travel back in time; very, very deep time. American composer John Luther Adams is brilliant at composing unique music which evokes deep time. His most recent album features his composition "an atlas of deep time" for orchestra. I will let Adams describe the work himself:
"I am walking through a desert, on the bottom of the sea. A glint catches my eye. I stop and pick it up. White coral, a shard of a colony of creatures that lived here some 300 to 500 million years ago. I can't comprehend how long ago that was. Yet by that time, 80 to 90 percent of the earth's history was already written in stone. This place where I'm standing now, wasn't here at all. The earth beneath my feet was much closer to the equator, rotated 90 degrees on the north-south axis, and submerged under warm tropical waters. I am walking in deep time. An Atlas of Deep Time is grounded in my desire, amid the turbulence of human affairs, to hear the old, deeper resonances of the earth. The piece is scored for large orchestra, arrayed in six instrumental choirs surrounding the listeners, and layered in six simultaneous tempos. Like the geologic layers of rocks beneath our feet, the densities and textures, the instrumental and harmonic colours are always changing, yet somehow the substance always seems to be the same. The earth is 4 billion 570 million years old. An Atlas of Deep Time has roughly 42 minutes, which equates to a little [over] 100 million years per minute. At that tempo, the entire history of the human family is represented in the dying reverberations of the last 25 milliseconds of this music." I am awestruck listening to this music. Music, before anything else, is time; and here you do feel like you have come face to face with eternity. Miraculously, "Become Desert", another major work by John Luther Adams is being performed in Ottawa in June by the NAC orchestra. Do not miss it! https://nac-cna.ca/en/event/36122 |
| An Atlas of Deep Time John Luther Adams/South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Delta David Gier - An Atlas of Deep Time - Cantaloupe Music
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| Tulunke Trio Da Kali - Bagola - One World Records
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| Laban Salif Keita - M'Bemba - Universal |
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2:42 PM, April 10th, 2025