What is the weight of the soul? Nothing. It is weightless. Or so I gathered, as I watched Boubacar Traore give a rare American concert.
If Boubacar were an American actor, he'd be cast as the wise old caddy. He certainly looked the part. The gentleman from Mali wore jeans, a blue oxford shirt, a loose tweed jacket --- a relaxed look that takes considerable thought. On his head, a checked wool golf cap. On his wrist, a tasty gold bracelet. But what you mostly notice is the face: ebony, unlined, the very picture of amusement and peace.
The Boubacar show couldn't be more streamlined. His drummer, Kandiamoudou Kouyate, plays an overturned gourd, clicking it with his rings and pounding it with the heel of his palm. Boubacar uses one amplified acoustic guitar for the entire concert.
Once you have accepted Boubacar's age --- or agelessness, really --- you have to deal with how much music can come out of two people. The beat helps; this merger of Delta blues and African rhythm and tuning is so heavily syncopated you don't quite know how to move to it. Then there is the small matter of Boubacar's musicianship, which is exciting in the extreme; when soft, his guitar is a whispered voice, both ghostly and precise, when fast and loud, it's like an entire blues band. Finally, that voice, which accesses all the known emotions and can dispense them at will.
Boubacar does a little two-step as he plays. When he hits a major groove, he prances. A solo prompts him to slide out of the spotlight and play in the dark. And when he finishes a song and the ovation comes --- as it does after each and every number --- he holds up his hands to stop it and then, with resignation and modesty, taps his heart.
You could say that all Boubacar's songs sound the same. True: Everything he plays is in the same key. The glory is in the subtlety. The quick explosions of energy and the quiet after. The drummer using his fingernails for soft clicks until you ache from all that restraint. And, over and over, the sheen of Boubacar's guitar playing, which is all shining surface and gleaming chords.
When performers are knockouts in Mali, it is apparently the custom to shower them with money. Several times during this concert, women left their seats to dance around Boubacar and rain dollar bills upon him. It's a charming gesture. But inadequate --- Boubacar Traore is a master, and when you're in that league, what you give to your audience is beyond price.
Is the experience the same on a CD? No. Which is why I'm ordering I'll Sing For You, a DVD that showcases Boubacar's performances in Mali. On the other hand, his CDs are flawless and exciting. Below, I praise my favorite. But after that concert, I suspect I'll soon own them all.
The blues masters from Mali know how to hypnotize you quickly. Using an ordinary guitar, climb a pentatonic scale if it's steps and walk back down, with only the click-click of hand drums as accompaniment. The lyrics? In French. But even if you don't speak the language, you'll grasp the feeling. Boubacar's concerns --- work, exile, prayer and his love for his dead wife --- are instantly comprehensible. The voice tells the story, and that story is slow, stately, old as time. But not sad --- it's set against music that gets your toe tapping from the get-go. And there you have the blues, straight from the African heartland.
This is music that some would call "native" and "primitive." In fact, it's enormously sophisticated --- so subtle and smart that it's hard to believe it's produced in the world's fifth poorest country. But Mali is also the home of (among other great musicians) the legendary Ali Farka Toure and some of the planet's most amazing architecture : mosques made of mud, sandstone villages carved into cliffs.
Mali was once the trading capital of the world --- remember Timbuktu? Now it's 65% desert. Most of its 12 million citizens farm or fish on the banks of the Niger River. Less than half the people are literate; life expectancy is 45. There is drought. Malaria. And then there is music.
Boubacar was the Elvis Presley of Mali in 1960, as it was becoming independent. You could hear him on the radio every day, singing "Mali Twist." Come home, he cried. Help us build our country. And his brothers heard him, and they threw themselves into building their nation.
He was a hero who didn't make records, so he made no money. To support his wife and six children, he became a tailor, then a salesman. His wife died. Crushed, he fled to Paris, where he was a construction worker. And then he was rediscovered.
Of Boubacar's records, I'm most mesmerized by "Macire." It may start haunting and quiet, but it ends with his version of the 1960s dance craze, "The Madison." If you're not on your feet and flopping around like a happy idiot within 30 seconds, you really ought to sit down and have a serious talk with yourself.
Little kids love Boubacar. Love saying his name. Love this music. Sometimes we play it at night for the Butler heiress as she drifts into sleep and, later in the evening, as we tuck in. Lord knows where the music takes us in the darkness, but I'll bet it's a good and soulful place. And so very light as to be weightless.
