Author and musician Yaya Diallo recently returned with his brand new album Kachii: Traditions to Traditions, a piece that showcased his talent for showcasing healing, devotional music that blends the worlds of traditional and experimental music. A blend of classical, bold, and challenging music of the present and future.
No better example is the album’s gorgeous opener “Kachi Zie”, a song that showcases the way Diallo and his team of talented musicians can take elements of classical music, world music, and merge them into a sonic territory that feels very much of its own rumination.
This is the sort of sound that you can imagine joining an important cinematic moment in a film or show, even acting as a possible score throughout.
Speaking on the album, Diallo provided the following insight:
” Kachii: ‘Traditions to Traditions’ is an album of ‘lost’ and ‘hidden’ music from the Minianka culture of south-eastern Mali. My goal is to play Minianka balafon music with traditional Western instruments—violin, cello, double-bass, flute—as well as African percussions—djembe, talking drum, and dounou—to create a new sound that can open doors for listeners worldwide.”
“This album honors the traditional role of coredjouga in Minianka culture, whose music is featured on the album. A coredjouga is a person who has shed everything, who has no need for material possessions and can educate others through irony. The symbol of the coredjouga is the vulture, who can live on scraps that others have left behind. That is what I have done in this new album, I have taken instruments that are old and left behind and transformed that into a new energy. We should stop wasting things and recycle them.”
“The selection of music in this recording draws from a repertoire of ‘lost’ and ‘hidden’ music which is no longer played in Minianka villages. Though this music is not normally meant to be heard by the public, now that Yaya is an elder, he feels it is necessary to record it: “This music belongs to humanity. My people say that when an old African dies, it is like a library burning. If I can share the small things that I get, I can be happy. I want my grandchildren to be able to play this music.”
You can stream “Kachi Zie” now below and can stream the album in full and purchase it over at Bandcamp.
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