Fatoumata Diawara
Guitarist, singer, actor, mother and survivor – we catch up with the Malian phenomenon mid-tour prior to yet another sold-out show as she continues to wow audiences across the globe with her sensational live performances
Blues is the base of everything,” begins Fatoumata Diawara. “Blues is the heartbeat. It comes from your soul. And from this soul and from this one heartbeat, you can do anything – any type of music.”
A prolific collaborator, the Grammy Award nominee has indeed cast her creative net far and wide while featuring on numerous studio recordings alongside the likes of Flea, Herbie Hancock and Bobby Womack, and sharing the stage with such luminaries as Paul McCartney, John Paul Jones and Damon Albarn.
“When I started to play guitar, it resolved everything,” she tells us prior to her Bristol show. “It was like healing my soul. Being able to express myself through the guitar was more important than I could have imagined. It totally changed my life. There were no more questions about who I was supposed to be.”
How did the Malian music scene shape you as a musician? “I grew up in Mali and, naturally, I grew up with traditional music. Malian music is diverse – we’ve got lots of different types. You can have 10 artists from Mali at the same festival and each of them will bring something different. And this is because of our traditional instruments. Compared with many countries in Africa, we’re still using them.”
What traditional instruments are commonly used in Mali? “The kora, bolon, balafon, soku, ngoni, kamalengoni… There are many, many instruments, but each of them speaks a different language. Each one will give you a different taste or flavour of music. Depending on the instrument, you naturally change the way you sing – the EQ and sonority of the vocal. Each instrument speaks a language and you have to adapt to it. After that kind of schooling, you can adapt to any kind of music.”
What makes Malian guitar music unique? “We have artists like Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré who have a certain sound. People recognise the sound of Malian guitar players. We transpose the ngoni – an instrument from this area – to the electric guitar. The ngoni is like the guitar.
If you can play this instrument, you can easily adapt to playing guitar. We don’t learn music at school in Mali. It’s all about the ear. You listen to it and when you get your guitar, you transpose your traditional instrument to the guitar. It’s a typical Malian thing.
“It’s very natural for us, because those instruments – the ngoni, kamalengoni and kora – are already blues. The sound is already blues. You feel it. You listen to it and you know how to do it. It’s like talking. It’s like speaking a language. It’s a natural thing. You don’t have to go to school to learn how to play.”
What prompted you to play the guitar? “I’m the first solo female electric guitar player in Mali; I’ve never seen it before. I know of some artists who touch on the acoustic guitar but not electric guitar. I was wondering to myself, ‘If we are so rich culturally, why are there so many instruments being played just by men?’ It seemed natural for me to ask, ‘If men can do it, why can’t [women] try?’ I was asking myself a lot of questions.”
Do you feel as if you’ve helped Malian music evolve in some way? “A little bit, in an up-to-date unique way. My generation are a little bit different to the generation before, because we had access to the new pop sound. We have one foot in the modern and one foot in the traditional.”
“I’m the first solo female electric guitar player in Mali. I’ve never seen it before”