Artist.......: Rokia TraorΘ
Album........: En Concert au Festival Fnac Live
Label........: n/a
Genre........: Ethnic
Catnr........: n/a
Source.......: DVBS
Rip.date.....: 2014-08-02
Str.date.....: 2013-07-20
Quality......: 207kbps/48.0kHz/Joint Stereo
Url..........: http://www.rokiatraore.net/
track title time
1. En Concert au Festival Fnac Live 26:48
Runtime 26:48
Size 39.69
Release Notes:
Rokia Traore's family was both a blessing and a curse for her musical career.
Her father was a diplomat and she spent her childhood travelling over several
continents, to Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, and France. There she was exposed
to a variety of styles of music, from classical, jazz, and pop to Indian
traditional composition. However, her family was also part of Mali's nobility,
which has traditional caste prohibitions against their members making music. For
her countryman Salif Keita, who was a member of the Manding people, it was an
almost insurmountable burden. For Traore, though, the prohibitions were not as
strict. The Bamana ethic group did have a musical tradition of their own,
especially among women, with performers called griottes travelling to perform at
weddings and gatherings.
Traore's musical style, however, has little in common with the griottes. Unlike
their signature wailing sound, her voice is smooth and gentle, and her
arrangements, while somewhat minimalist, make use of both traditional
instruments like the balafon, n'goni, and kora, as well as acoustic guitar and
electric bass. That sound is evident on her debut release, Mouneissa, from 1998,
but most evident on her 2000 release, Wanita. For Wanita, Traore wrote and
arranged the entire album, seizing the controls from a male engineer who
believed that a young girl was incapable of handling the production of an album.
The result shows a deeply personal and individual style which reflects both
innovation and tradition.
She followed the set with Bowmbo∩ in 2003, for Nonesuch which was co-produced by
Judith Sherman and Thomas Weill; she handled all the band's arrangements. For
2008's TchamantchΘ, she recorded for UNI Jazz in Europe. After a five year
recording break, Traore surprised fans by releasing her first rock record--she
is a longtime admirer of Dire Straits--Beautiful Africa. Produced by John Parish
(PJ Harvey), it was released in April of 2013.