|
Two guitars for two Guineans >> Alpha Yaya Diallo and Lilison Cordeiro: West African musicians in the Great White North by CHRIS YURKIW
Despite the fact that the liaison eventually ran its course, it's a testament to how far Diallo has come in Canada that today he very correctly refers to his former wife, in French-African accented English, as his "ex-partner." There are other signs, too: his band of Vancouver session guys Bafing, two albums on his own label (both nominated for Juno's Best Global Recording) and a third called The Message that recently got him signed to an international deal with the Wicklow label, run by Chieftain's frontman Paddy Moloney, and which finally won that Juno Award this year. Diallo's music gets called neo-traditional, and it's a typical "world-music" mix of influences from his corner of West Africa in the former French colony of Guinea. There's a little soukous seeped over from Senegal, a slight Arabic vibe from his fellow Muslims, and a bit of a Hispano-Portuguese feeling in his guitar playing that often transposes the "shimmering arpeggios" of the kora, the West African guitar-like gourd. "I learned the guitar in Manding, in the east part of Guinea close to Mali," says Diallo. "They have very melodic instruments there--they don't use too many drums. But in the west part of Guinea, where I'm from, the Fulani people use a lot of drums. People think Africa is just drumming or dancing, but we have a very rich style of playing guitar." Mellow acoustic Cordeiro In West Africa, Alpha Yaya Diallo and Lilison Cordeiro were relative neighbours, the latter having "come into this world," as he likes to say, in the adjacent nation of Guinea-Bissau, this one a former Portuguese colony. But in Canada they're a continent apart, Cordeiro having transplanted himself to Montreal in 1986. His first album has just come out now (Bambatulu, on Le Musicomptoir label) although he's gigged for years with local dance troupes and name musicians. And if Diallo stayed in Canada because he found love, Lili left home to try to forget a heart twice broken (once by a girl, once by a band). Cordeiro's music relies even more on the (acoustic) guitar than Diallo's--his band, Lilison Di Kinara, is made up of two other guitarists and a percussionist--and it has little of the dance bop of Diallo's pop. It's acoustic and mellow and slightly mournful--indeed, Cordeiro sings in the same language as Cesaria Evora's mornas, Portuguese Creole. "The guitar is a kind of Spanish and Portuguese presence in [Guinea-Bissau's] music," says Lili in a rough French. "The guitar went from Spain to Portugal and then down to Africa, and that's one thing that's still with us. But you'll hear a lot of rhythm in the way that we play the guitar--that's very African." Lili too talks of transposing, but not the sound of the kora: "I imagine that I'm on the dock in my town in Bissau, with my musicians, and we're listening to the sounds of the village: the boats, women calling after their children, roosters singing... And we try to transpose those sounds to the tambour and the guitar. "Yeah, it's very difficult [living in Canada]. But that's part of the experience of being an immigrant. It's like your house has burned down and you go to live with your neighbour. But your neighbour has children, and you're like another child that arrives. You're taken in, but you remain like a child in that house. "But if your neighbour is good and they let you live your life in their house, they're giving you a lot of consideration and you have to give them a lot of consideration back. You have to have a lot of respect for those people. That's a very old African notion, but it resembles my life today." Lilison Di Kinara play Cabaret tonight, Thursday, April 15 and Friday, April 16, 8:30pm, $17+taxes. Alpha Yaya Diallo performs at Club Balattou on Monday, April 19, 10pm, $10 in advance, $15 at the door
|
"I made a very quick decision. I didn't plan to do that," says Guinean guitarist and singer Alpha Yaya Diallo, of his adoption of Vancouver as home back in 1991. It was at the end of a tour by the late Fatala, a crack unit of Guineans living in Amsterdam and hooked up to the Real World-WOMAD axis. They had spent an inordinate two weeks in B.C.--mountains, oceans, dreadlocks... Oh yeah--there was a girl involved.