Toumani Diabaté, Mali’s ‘king of the kora’ who worked with Damon Albarn and Björk – obituary
Toumani Diabaté, who has died aged 58 after a short illness, was one of the finest African musicians of the past few decades; known as “the king of the kora”, he revelled in fusing his native music with Western styles and he worked with such musicians such as Damon Albarn and Björk as well as the London Symphony Orchestra.
The kora is a traditional West African instrument, usually with 21 strings, that has been played for hundreds of years; something between a lute and a harp, it produces a mesmerising, shimmering sound – and although it had generally been played as an accompaniment to praise songs and storytelling, Diabaté believed passionately that it could rival the India sitar or the western piano as a solo instrument.
Toumani Diabaté was born in Gallé, a small town in south-western Mali, on August 10 1965, into a family of griots – a caste of poets, musicians and storytellers – and said he could trace his family back through 70 generations of musicians.
His father was Sidiki Diabaté, the first “king of the kora” and a member of Mali’s National Instrumental Ensemble (Toumani insisted that he taught himself to play just by listening to his father); his mother was the singer Nene Koita. His younger brother, Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté, is also a master of the kora, while his cousin, Sona Jobarteh, was the first woman to play the instrument professionally.
Toumani’s father had released the first kora album, and in 1987 the two appeared together on the LP Ba Togoma. That year, the ethnomusicologist and BBC Radio Three broadcaster Lucy Durán travelled to Mali looking for musicians for a festival she was curating at the South Bank in London, and recruited father and son.
When the festival was over Toumani stayed on for a few months, during which time he made his first solo album, Kaira, produced by Lucy Durán and recorded in a single afternoon.
Released on Joe Boyd’s Hannibal label, it made Diabaté’s name, and he soon began to spread his musical wings, teaming up in Madrid the following year with the Andalusian flamenco band Ketama and the veteran folk and jazz double bassist Danny Thompson to record Songhai. One of the first great world-music collaborations, the album was described by the Telegraph as “exhilarating” (a follow-up, Songhai 2, came out six years later).
In 1990 Diabaté formed the Symmetric Orchestra, drawing on musicians from across what had been the Mande empire centuries before, encompassing Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso as well as Mali; they continued to tour and record over the years.
Diabaté explored musical fusions throughout his career. He did more work with Danny Thompson, making the album Djelika in 1995 – “compelling, surprisingly aggressive, irresistibly lyrical” said the Telegraph – and in 1999 he recorded Kulanjan with the great American bluesman Taj Mahal: “Mahal’s steel guitar glances entrancingly off Diabaté’s exquisite minor-key cadences,” the Telegraph judged.
“I’ve never once abandoned my own musical culture,” Diabaté said of his collaborations, “but I’ve done all these things to show that the kora is not limited.”
In 1999 he also worked with his fellow kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko on the album New Ancient Strings; a reworking of traditional themes, it was recorded in a single take in the marble hallway of a conference centre in Mali’s capital Bamako.
In 2002 he joined Damon Albarn in the Blur frontman’s Mali Music project, recording an album and appearing at the Barbican Centre – but he was unafraid to speak his mind over the singer’s accompaniments on melodica.
“Maybe it went out of tune on the plane,” he speculated, “but it throws everything else out. I respect Damon as a musician and I appreciate everything he is doing for our music, but I had no idea this music would be put out on CD.” The album, though, wrote the Telegraph, had “irresistible emotive power”.
In 2007 Diabaté played with another inveterate collaborator, Björk, on her album Volta, and went on to share a stage with her at Glastonbury. In 2008 he was appointed a UN Goodwill Ambassador in recognition of his work highlighting HIV/Aids in his music.
In 2010 he appeared at the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival curated by the Simpsons creator Matt Groening at Minehead in Somerset, and he was a regular at Womad festivals around the world. In 2014, with his son Sidiki, he released an album of duets, Toumani and Sidiki, while his later collaborators included the American banjo player Béla Fleck and Kayhan Kalhor, the Iranian virtuoso of the spike fiddle.
Toumani Diabaté is survived by two wives, Fanta Sacko and Sira Diallo, and by two sons with Fanta.
Toumani Diabaté, born August 10 1965, died July 19 2024