Today marks the release of The Mande Variations, Toumani Diabate's follow-up to 2006's Boulevard de l'Independence, with the Symmetric Orchestra, and his first solo record in more than two decades.
The New York Times's Jon Pareles includes the album in his Playlist this week, calling it "the work of a modern virtuoso rethinking an age-old instrument." Toumani, writes Pareles:
turns the syncopated propulsion of griot songs into cascading counterpoint, or hangs simple melodies in midair, or constructs filigrees with each note as precisely weighted as the phrases of a Renaissance lute piece. On its own, in close-up, the kora sounds radiant.
To read Pareles's Playlist, visit nytimes.com.
---
David Hutcheon, writing in The Times (UK), describes the circumstances under which journalists from across Europe made their way to Spain for a live display of Toumani's "dazzling virtuosity." Reports Hutcheon: "the magic is complete: countless notes tumble from his instrument, as if he is playing every part of an orchestra. The solo performance holds us spellbound."
The Mande Variations comes 21 years after his last solo record, the seminal album Kaira, and, says Hutcheon, the new record "picks up where his earliest recordings left off ... But now Diabate has far more power as a musician, and the tunes are just starting points for his improvisations."
To read the Times article, visit entertainment.timesonline.co.uk.
---
The Guardian's Robin Denselow gives The Mande Variations four stars, calling it a "remarkable" follow-up to the "exquisite" Kaira. You can read the album review at arts.guardian.co.uk. Denselow also spoke with Diabate about the new record and about various collaborations with the likes of Björk, Damon Albarn, Taj Mahal, and Ali Farka Touré; read that article at music.guardian.co.uk.
---
The Evening Standard also gives the album four stars and names it a CD of the Week. Writes critic Simon Broughton:
The West African kora is one of the most seductive instruments on the planet---a sublime concoction of calabash gourd, cowskin and fishing line. And Toumani Diabaté, from a hereditary family of musicians in Mali, is its greatest exponent. With filigree, rippling melodies, the music is soft, elegant and profound ... [It] takes you to another world.
To read the review, visit thisislondon.co.uk.
Broughton offers more of Toumani's story in a separate article for New Statesman magazine. In it, he praises the album's "gloriously clear sound" and calls The Mande Variations "probably the most ambitious album of solo kora music ever recorded." To read the article, visit newstatesman.com.
---
The Independent also gives the album four stars. Reviewer Andy Gill says it proves "worth the wait" of those years since Kaira; he sees the new album as "offering a dazzling demonstration of the breadth and virtuosity of Diabaté's playing, and of the innovative tunings and tactics with which he expands the instrument's traditional range." To read the review, visit independent.co.uk.
---
The Telegraph's classical music critic Ivan Hewett was surprised and skeptical, at first, when he received what he assumed must be "world" music and therefore outside his purview. But, he writes, "I was enchanted, and now play it all the time, even when I ought to be getting on with something else."
Of the kora, Hewitt writes that it possesses "among the most sheerly seductive sounds of any instrument in the world." And as for Toumani, he praises
the pleasure to be had from the dizzying virtuosity of Diabaté's playing. He'll take the end of a melodic phrase and spin it into a whirling Catherine-wheel figuration out of sheer joie de vivre ... [T]his music has playfulness in abundance.
Regardless of whether, ultimately, this music would be better labeled classical or otherwise, "it's wonderful on its own terms."
To read the Telegraph review, telegraph.co.uk.
---
Listen to "Ali Farka Toure" (6:20), track three off the new record, here:
Click here to add The Mande Variations CD plus the free album MP3s to your Shopping Cart now for only $15.98. Visit the Nonesuch Store for more options.