ABOU DIARRA - Traditional music of West Africa (Mali) 

Marked by the ancestral culture of the mandika hunters, Abou Diarra is a kamale ngoni (Malian sitar) player whose career could be considered strange and unusual. Trained by a visually impaired virtuoso master he knew for seven years, he had walked, for several months, the roads between Abidjan and Bamaka… on foot, accompanied only by his instrument. Going through the most isolated villages of West Afrika and the modern megacities, he collected, one by one, the hidden traditional sounds and the modern urban music. His music speaks of travels, of exile, of mouvement. Fascinated by blues, jazz, reggae, groove and rhythms and styles in which cultures and sounds are mixed, Abou Diarra explores outside of the classical ranges, and uses his ngoni as a guitar, a bass, a harp and as drums, in soft and nostalgic ballads and in wild rhythms inviting to spontaneous dances. 

The ngoni is an african harp that can be played as a kora, the difference being that the kora is tuned on the diatonic scale (Mandika) while the ngoni is tuned on the pentatonic scale (Bambara). Before the kameke ngoni, there was the donso ngoni used by hunters. Even before, there was the djeli ngoni, smaller in size, used by the griot in front of the King. The kora arrived after.