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| Mamadou Diabate & Percussion Mania External Friday, April 8, 2022 at 8:00pm @ ROULETTE Award-winning balafon (xylophone) master Mamadou Diabate comes from a family of griots (oral historians/praise singers) of the Sambla people in Burkina Faso. Helping to keep alive the balafon's 800-year-old history, he is a popular performer at festivals in Africa, Europe, Malaysia and India.Often when he performs balafon solos, he creates the impression that three balafonists are playing together. The shows with his ensemble, Mamadou Diabate & Percussion Mania, are a true explosion of energy on stage and musically on the highest level of traditional African sound fused with jazz and modern elements. Mamadou Diabate began his musical training at the age of five with his father Penegue Diabate and three years later began studying with other renowned balafon players. In 1988 and 1998 he won first prize at the National Culture Week of Burkina Faso. Since moving to Austria in 2000, he has released 13 albums. His second album, Keneya, was the first recording of the traditional balafon music of the Sambla people, a tonal language translated into music (known as surrogate speech). Mamadou has collaborated with musicians from various backgrounds, including Cheick Tidiane Seck, Habib Koité, Sigi Finkel, and Wolfgang Puschnig, and appeared at such prestigious festivals as Colours of Ostrava (Czech Republic), the Saalfelden Jazz Festival (Austria), Sufi Sutra (India), and the Rainforest Festival (Malaysia). He founded Sababu, a primary school in Bobo-Dioulasso, where poor children are taught for free. Since 2016 he has worked with Laura McPherson at Dartmouth College on the research and documentation of the Sambla balafon language. In 2016, he was made knight of the National Order of Burkina Faso, and in 2019, he received the Best International Artist award of Burkina Faso. "magical…on fire" – Afropop Worldwide write your comments about the article :: © 2022 Jazz News :: home page |