Man ika n'kanou fo déli faralé
E ké n'kanou fo o o
Man kounan gêlou guê lén né guê lén
Man ika n'kanou fo déli farala
E ka n'kanou fo o o
Maïmouna fo o o
Salimata fo o o o
Djara woré fo o o
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni taama la
E ké n'kanou fo o o
Maïmouna fo o o
Salimata fo o o o
Djara woré fo o o
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni taama la
E ké n'kanou fo o o
Hum kounan gêlou guê lén né guê lén
Sii gnon lou ko o
N'fourou gnon lou ko o o
Balima lou ko
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni yêlê la
E ké n'kanou fo o o
Sii gnon lou ko o
N'fourou gnon lou ko o o
Ko né faa lé ko
Chéri na lé ko né ma
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni taama la
I ké n'kanou fo o o
Sii gnon lou ko o
N'fourou gnon lou ko o o
Kanou gnon on ko
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni yêlê la
I ké n'kanou fo o o
Né yé billet é ta n'kanou yé
Pari billet ta a
Né yé billet é ta n'kanou yé
Amériki billet ta a
Né yé billet é ta n'kanou yé
Japon billet ta a
E hi yé é n'kanou yo
I ké n'kanou fo o o
Sii gnon lou ko o
N'fourou gnon lou ko o o
Chéri na lé ko
Déni na lé ko né ma
Né é kélén kon non fô gnon
Bê ni yêle la
I ké n'kanou fo o o
Man kounan gêlou guê lén né guê lén
I ka n'kanou fo o o
E ké n'kanou fo o o
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
Je ne sais pas
Ce que mon corps a
Je ne sais pas
Si mon corps a
Chauffe si il a froid
Où mon corps ère ?
En ce début d'hiver
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
Mais de quel bois me chauffes-tu ?
De quel bois es-tu fait ?
Mais de quel bois me chauffes-tu ?
De quel bois es-tu nu ?
De quel bois es tu fort ?
Quand il fait froid dehors
Fais chauffer l'eau
Fais chauffer l'eau
Fais chauffer l'eau
Fais chauffer l'eau, fais chauffer l'eau, fais chauffer l'eau
Fais chauffer l'eau
Fais chauffer l'eau
M'a dis-tu tout bas
C'est de l'eau pas du feu qu'il faut
Pour allumer ce bois
C'est de l'eau pas du feu qu'il faut
Pour allumer la kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
J'étais partie loin de mon corps
Tu m'y as ramenée
Kora
Korakorakorakorakorakorakorakorakora
Frottez-les mains,
Frottez-les mains,
ne serait-ce que pour se réchauffer.
Frottez-les mains,
Frottez-les mains,
Peut-être pour nous rapprocher
Chaque fois que je t’effleure n’a rien de commun
Quand on s’aime, on se frotte les mains.
Tous les soirs je me dois d'célébrer
les lendemains sont mes jours préférés.
Tiens moi fort, volontiers,
que mes bras retiennent le ciel tout entier.
Ce matin j’vais travailler
sans appât du gain
donc je me frotte les mains
Quand t’as que l'appât du gain, t’es ennuyé
sans la passion tu disparais sous-payé
Les mains sont faites pour se guérir
Soulager ou créer des souvenirs
tactiles mon vocabulaire n'étouffe pas
Beaucoup pensent communiquer, et ne se touchent pas
Bébé est tombé, s’est fait bobo
La bosse est massé le dodo c’est cadeau
ce qu’on dit de plus fort passe par là
les mains dans les poches ça sonne l’alarme
T’es d’accord on s’est serré la pince
l’oublier c‘est se faire le coup du lapin
les paumes tournées vers Neptune.
C'est s'offrir une autre lecture.
J’ai la main levée en signe de paix
Frottez les vôtres s’il vous plaît.
Frottez les mains,
Frottez les mains,
ne serait-ce que pour se réchauffer
Frottez les mains,
Frottez les mains,
peut-être pour nous rapprocher
J’entends rien
J’ai demandé au gens bien de frottez les mains
sinon le rythme se perd
les vibrations se séparent
C'est une conversation où personne ne parle.
Écoutez ce repère
C'est la vie qui repart
Nana mousso debè soma wolo
Notè mousso teke somaye
Nana mousso debè soma wolo
Notè mousso teke somaye
Sisè be djimi nana Kadidja ye naye
Sisè be djimi nana Kadidja ye naye
Imi fèmiye barolla yalunge soro kele kele
Imi fèmiye barolla lomumbe soro kele kele
Nana Kadidja allaye ni kiye oh Kadidja
Nana Kadidja kilaye ni kiye oh Kadidja
Nana mousso debè soma wolo
Notè mousso teke somaye
Si sona djimi nana Kadidja ye naye
Sokona djimi nana Kadidja ye naye
Eminiye barolla yamumbe soro kele kele
Fèmiye barolla yalunge soro kele kele
Nana Kadidja allaye ni kiye oh Kadidja
Nana Kadidja kilaye ni kiye oh Kadidja
Nana mousso debè soma wolo
Notè mousso teke somaye
Dévêts-toi
De ce cache misère
Laisse à la frontière
À l'aurore
Un vêtement pour la Lune
Plus tard quand elle descendra
Toi sors du bois
M'a dit la branche
Descend
Je me penche
Pour toi
Descend
Est-ce que ça n'était qu'un songe ?
Sors du bois
Retourne là où tu t'es laissé toi -même
Où tu as craint
Tes chiens aux abois
Tes animaux domestiques
Fais face
La nuit a passé
La lune est tombée
Puis retombée
De l'autre côté
L'aurore est venue
Alors descends de moi
M'a dit la branche
Vois je me penche
File
Et compte sur moi
Rêve sur moi
En pensées
Même là-bas
Je serai dans le bois
Moi aussi j'y penserai
Me dit la branche
Tu le sais maintenant
Qu'il ne faut pas attendre de délivrance
Ni un signe
De la Lune immense
Inflexible
Comment pourrait-elle battre des cils
Elle qui n'a pas de paupières ?
Voilà tout ça c'était hier
Laisse-là à la frontière
Un soir où je m’en allais
M’en allais loin de moi-même
Je me suis retrouvé
Dans un bois
La nuit m’a surpris tout de suite
Ne sachant où dormir
J’ai grimpé à un arbre
J’étais seul tu sais
Terriblement seul
Dans un grand silence
Dans ce grand silence
Pour affronter la nuit blanche
Étendu sur ma banche
J’ai parlé à la lune
Lune, jette sur la nuit blanche
Ta lumière argentine
Moi étendu sur la branche
J’attends que ton œil cligne
Vois, comme vers toi je penche
J’attends que ton œil cligne
Oh oui Lune
Je t'en prie Lune
Donne-moi des signes
Lune, à l’aurore je te quitte
Adieu je ne reviendrai plus
Me baigner dans l’eau interdite
Où je te vois nue
La nuit est passée si vite
Laisse-moi encore te chercher
Une fois dans l’eau trouble
Où miroite ton double
Mais ton reflet se dissipe et me voilà seul
Pour affronter la profondeur de mon désarroi
Au bord de la conscience
Au bord de la présence
À la frontière
Où tout s’amenuise
Comme peau de chagrin
Cache-misère !
Peau de chagrin
Cache-misère !
Peau de chagrin
Cache-misère !
Peau de chagrin
Cache-misère !
Laisse-moi caresser ta peau de chagrin
Ton corps
Oui je veux caresser ta peau de chagrin
Ton corps qui s’amenuise
Laisse-moi caresser ta peau de chagrin
Ton corps
Cache-misère !
Oui je veux caresser ta peau de chagrin
Ton corps
Repose ton corps sur moi
Oh Lune étrange
Je n’attends plus de délivrance
Je n’attends plus de délivrance
Je sais que la Lune jamais ne cligne son œil immense
La Lune jamais ne cligne son œil immense
M'a dit la branche
Compte sur moi
Dors sur moi
Rêve sur moi
Mais compte sur moi
Dors sur moi
Rêve sur moi
M’a dit la branche
Compte sur moi
Dors sur moi
Rêve sur moi
Compte sur moi
Dors sur moi
Rêve sur moi
M’a dit la branche
Mais n’attends pas de délivrance non
La Lune jamais ne cligne son œil immense
Non n’attends pas de délivrance
La Lune jamais ne cligne son œil immense
M’a dit la branche
N’attends rien
N’attends rien
N’attends rien
N’attends rien
Compte sur moi
Dors sur moi
Rêve sur moi
Dans ce grand silence
N'attends rien
N'attends rien
N'attends rien.
Executive production and A&R - Laurent Bizot
Artwork and graphic design - Jérôme Witz, Element-s
Mastered by François Fanelli on October 10th, 2020 at Sonics Mastering studio
Published by Nø Førmat!
Demba Kunda
(Ballaké Sissoko)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Recorded on October 18th, 2018
by Michel Van Achter at Chapelle Sainte-Apolline, Herve, Belgium
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Djourou
(Ballaké Sissoko)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Sona Jobarteh - Kora, vocals
Recorded on July 26th 2019
by Sébastien Tondo at Studio 12 ter, Montreuil, FR
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Jeu sur la Symphonie Fantastique
(H. Berlioz, arranged by Vincent Segal)
Work for hire for the Berlioz Festival
Warm thanks to Bruno Messina
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Vincent Segal - Cello
Patrick Messina - Clarinet
Recorded on January 6th, 2020
by Sébastien Tondo at Studio 12 ter, Montreuil, FR
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Guelen
(Salif Keita)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Salif Keita - Vocals
Recorded in November 2012 by Karim Sai and his students
at Studio Moffou, Bamako, Mali during the Vivendi annual sound engineer training session.
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Kora
(Ballaké Sissoko / Camille Dalmais)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Camille - Vocals
Clément Petit - Cello
Recorded on December 12th, 2019
by Sébastien Tondo at Studio 12 ter, Montreuil, FR
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Mande Tabolo
(Ballaké Sissoko)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Recorded on October 18th, 2018 by Michel Van Achter
at Chapelle Sainte-Apolline, Herve, Belgium
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Frotter les Mains
(Ballaké Sissoko / Oxmo Puccino)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Oxmo Puccino - Vocals
Recorded on July 9th 2020 by Renaud Letang at Studios Ferber, Paris, FR
Mixed by Renaud Letang at Studios Ferber, Paris, FR
Kadidja
(Ballaké Sissoko / Piers Faccini)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Piers Faccini - Guitar, vocals
Recorded on August 29th 2019
by Yoan Jauneaud at Le Prieuré de Cézas, FR
Mixed by Yoan Jauneaud at studio Kasbah,
La Grange, Causse de la selle, FR
Un Vêtement Pour la Lune
(Ballaké Sissoko / Arthur Teboul)
Ballaké Sissoko - Kora
Arthur Teboul - Vocals
Raphaël de Pressigny - Percussions, Hang Drum
Antoine Wilson - Keyboards
Recorded on March 2nd, 2020 by Samy Osta,
assisted by Hugo Bracchi at Studio Midi Live Villetaneuse, FR
Mixed by Samy Osta at studio Le Phonographe, Paris, FR
Thanks to all the artists who contributed to this album and to
Corinne Serres
Bruno Messina
Graham Lawson
Pascale Thumerelle
Françoise Le Crom
Claudia Ambruosi
Marie-Annick Darmaillac
Christian Syren
Jean-Philippe Allard
Farah Kammoun, Geraldine Cayrou
Nicole Schluss, Marc Mottin
Michel Van Achter
Karim Sai
Sébastien Tondo
Renaud Letang
Samy Osta
Special thanks to Vincent Segal
and to Yoan Jauneaud and François Fanelli
for their passion an dedication
“Djourou is the cord that connects me to other people”, says Ballaké Sissoko with characteristic simplicity. It would be hard to find a more lucid way of explaining the title, and the spirit, of Sissoko’s new album, which presents the Malian kora-player’s music in all its multi-faceted forms: intimate and universal, singular and plural, solo or in conversation with artists whose contributions come across like declarations of love.
Artists like Oxmo Puccino, giant of French rap, who was invited to feature on the new record by the man who’s become like an uncle to him. “Ballaké Sissoko represents a slice of Malian music history”, he says. “It’s a powerful silence, a sacred music."
Uncle? Makes sense. After more than forty years of loyal service to the 21 strings of the kora, the harp-cum-lute that has become the musical emblem of West Africa, Ballaké Sissoko has achieved elder status. It’s always been a story of love for him, a love that was apparent at the very beginning, when he first started playing his father’s instrument, urged on by his own heart and nothing else. His father, the kora giant and co-director of the famous National Instrumental Ensemble of Mali, Djeli Mady Sissoko, never put any pressure on his first-born son, though he must have sensed his keen attraction to the instrument.
Ballaké would sit in silence for hours, at a safe distance, listening to his father play. So eventually, Djeli Mady decided to entrust the key of the room where the kora was kept to the young boy. For one with such boundless curiosity, there could have been no greater invitation. And so Ballaké started to play, and his talent began to get noticed. But then suddenly, brutally, his father was taken away from him, and Ballaké was catapulted into adulthood.
The eldest son became the family’s main provider. He joined the National Instrumental Ensemble, the state-run orchestra that brought together the greatest instrumentalists from all corners of Mali. There, he learned from his elders (among them Sidiki Diabate, father of Toumani), just by listening, endlessly. He’s never lost that ability to listen – an ability that’s one of the mainstays of a traditional Malian education. You have to listen before you speak and Ballaké learned to listen before he played, to touch with his ears before touching the strings, just as a great photographer might touch with her eyes before pressing the shutter.
Ballaké’s mastery of the classic kora repertoire and his gift for improvisation, fruit of those long spans of silent attentiveness, soon became apparent. But the young musician felt the urge to bring the ancient art of the kora face to face with the music of other worlds, a desire that had little hope of satisfaction within the National Instrument Ensemble. So he embarked on a solo career. He was fascinated by the Indian sitar and the flamenco guitar, and he worked on transposing their techniques to the kora. He discovered Arabic instruments like the qanun (hammered dulcimer) and oud (lute), or western ones like the cello, which can be made to sound like the Malian bolon (traditional bass harp) or soko (traditional monochord violin). This fascination led him, many years later, to a meeting with cellist Vincent Segal and a musical partnership that would give birth to two classics of Malian mixity: Chamber Music and Musiques de Nuit, both on Nø Førmat!
Ballaké Sissoko has often demonstrated a fondness for profoundly meditative tête-à-têtes with his kora (check the album Déli, released in 1997). But he’s also hungered for musical companionship and the wonders that result from a true marriage of the art of listening and the art of playing. Whether duetting with Toumani Diabate on New Ancient Strings (the follow up to the foundational kora album Ancient Strings or ‘Cordes Anciennes’, recorded by Ballaké and Toumani’s respective fathers, Djelimady and Sidiki, back in 1970), or with the pianist Ludovico Einaudi on the jazzy poetic road-trip that became Diarió Mali, Ballaké revels in the kind of dialogue where every note seem to speak with two voices. Or even three (as happened when he rubbed shoulders with the valiha of Rajery and the oud of Driss el Maloumi in the trio 3MA).
Djourou is a magnificent distillation of that same art: the art of being yourself and being with others. It combines pieces in which Ballaké converses, all alone, with his kora, and others in which he takes palpable pleasure in dialoguing musicians from distant horizons. Both approaches are handled with equal precision.
Everyone is tied to Ballaké by that invisible string, that djourou, each in their own way. For Oxmo Puccino, interacting with Ballaké’s kora, whose “ancient notes resonate all the way back to the ancestors”, is like going back to the old country, Mali, and to his childhood. Puccino, who loves rubbing words together to create poetic sparks, has contributed a lyric about rubbing hands, about the joy of meeting, of touching, in a world that is becoming ever more contactless and distanced. When Ballaké pays, Puccino sees “a ballet of fingers on dozens of strings. It’s beautiful to watch. It’s as if he’s knitting the music together.”
The French singer Camille shares Puccino’s fascination and knits her own words into a sublime love letter to the kora. Vincent Segal (cello) and Patrick Messina (clarinet) team up with Ballaké to take Berlioz and his Symphonie Fantastique on an epic journey along the banks of the Niger river, a place rich in heroic sagas of its own. The voice of Piers Faccini, another of Ballaké’s longstanding fellow-travellers, floats above the deep notes of Ballaké’s kora on Kadidja – a ballad sung in Bamanan, the language of the Bambara people of Mali – creating colours that are both startlingly new and profoundly moving. Each of these duos has its own creative rationale, its own story, its own magic.
Inviting Sona Jobarteh, the talented female kora player from The Gambia, to guest on the album was Ballaké’s way of uniting the generations and reconnecting with their common forebears, weaving a thread across borders that were unknown to the griots back in the days when the Malian empire radiated over much of West Africa. The depth and power of history also resonates in ‘Guelen’, a spontaneous and intimate duo that pairs Ballaké’s kora with the sacred voice of Salif Keita, recorded ‘at home’ in Keita’s Mouffou Studios in Bamako.
Bringing the album to its conclusion, Ballaké takes the strings of his kora on a madcap adventure in the company of Arthur Teboul, singer with French mavericks Feu! Chatterton. Together they reach for the stars and reclothe them in poetry. It’s the culmination of journey during which the string, the djourou that connects Ballaké to all those myriad musicians and styles reveals a deeper power: the ability to connect us to the earth, to the stars, to others and to ourselves.
16/04/2022 FRIBOURG (CH) La Spirale
03/09/2022 ROVERETO (IT) Oriente Festival