Feeling the Birdsong: The Conjuring of Oumou Sangaré
It’s almost impossible to talk about world music with it not resembling poetry. Sounds become similes of our emotional experience. T.S. Eliot once said that poetry is “felt before it is understood,” and that is how I approach musicians like Oumou Sangaré, who hails from Mali in West Africa. I must surrender my sense of inquiry and allow myself to be transported to a different system. A different way of listening. That, for me, is where I find the riches.
For most of us attending Sangaré’s performance March 28 at the North Garden
Assembly Room at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum, it will be a sonic experience. Likely few of us will understand the Wassoulou language in which she sings, but like much of the World Music that draws us to these performances, we have been moved specifically by a sense of curiosity in the instrumentation and unique scales that the world has to offer beyond the tonal systems we are accustomed to.
Sangaré’s most recent album, 2022’s Timbuktu, starts with what seems like a Chicago-style blues riff and then erupts into a gritty, sultry anthem. The classic, hypnotic cyclical structure is there, but the vocals are searing and urgent.
The video for the song is a delight featuring an entire chorus of women dancing traditionally in different contexts, assuming dominant poses on motorcycles, playing electric guitars in living rooms, and splashing on the ocean shore. It is an entirely matriarchal celebration of the Wassulu Don (people). The song itself asserts how the Wassulu have elevated the status of their traditional n’goni (a stringed instrument that has been around since the 13th century) and have transcended stereotypes because “Wassulu” is now a shelter for peace, development, and investment in education, health, and commerce. Admittedly, I don’t understand the original
Bambara lyrics, but thankfully they are translated for context in the liner notes. I don’t know how necessary it is for the novice listener to understand the levity of the messages in the songs on Timbuktu, but undoubtedly Sangaré, as most world artists often have to do, will be an ambassador of her music and culture and will provide us with a cultural framework for what we are feeling.
“Sabou Dogoné,” for example, is uniquely dirge-like in its call and response layered with distant siren-like instrumentation. It’s wounding. I feel like I know exactly what is happening, and I have no knowledge of the lyrics.
By chance, 10 of the eleven songs on Timbuktu were written in the United States. She found herself inadvertently locked down in New York and then Baltimore during the pandemic. It was the first time in her career that she was able to “focus solely on the work of composition.” She embraced the seclusion and the American ancestors of the n’goni, the dobro and slide guitar, which give many of the tracks of Timbuktu a uniquely western flavor, paradoxically rooted in the African experience.
The cyclical rhythms on the new album are primal, urgent and meditative. There is an unrelenting cadence that keeps the listener engaged. Indeed, these rhythms derived from the brotherhood of Wassoulou hunters known as Donsow. The rhythm is a baptismal bedrock that carries through all the music, manifesting itself most notably in what would become the kamele n’goni (young person’s harp), which is unique to the Wassoulou region since the ‘50s and has served to elevate the music of the region. These structures have been the framework for Sangare’s birdsong since 1989 when her first album came out.
Context isn’t everything in the world of music, but it can surely nourish our experience with the melody and lyricism. Sangaré embodies this notion. Sonically, her music is an incantation.
Something is being conjured and we are part of the ceremony.
While the genre’s name unfairly dilutes the cultural value of each region represented, World Music musicians have no choice but to be ambassadors of their history and culture. Sangaré embraces this. To say she is a Black feminist icon is understatement. Her biography is readily available in several places, and it is absolutely astounding and highly recommended to read ahead of her performance in Savannah as part of the 35th year of the Savannah Music Festival. She has been an advocate for women since before she could sing and has since promoted peace, justice, entrepreneurship, and cultural integrity for women around the world. But again, after feeling the music, I don’t think much of it will come as a surprise, rather it will just validate the power of her musical conjuring.