I always find it very funny when someone says they really like "African Music" and then become almost insulted when I ask them which country's music they're talking about. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and hope they're only stupid and not being deliberately insulting by implying that a continent filled with more countries, cultures, and peoples than North and South America combined could possibly be represented by one style of music. Still it's hard not to laugh when they become indignant when asked for specifics.
Of course that's being a little unfair as most types of music played in Africa, with the exception of popular genres, aren't specific to one country but to a region of the continent. That's only because the borders of so many countries bear no relation to traditional tribal boundaries. As a result, some people have found they now live across the border from other members of their own tribe. While others, like the nomadic Tuareg, have found that traveling across their territory now involves crossing four or even five borders. Looking at a map of Africa, it's easy to understand why you wouldn't know the location of Guinea-Bissau. The tiny former Portuguese colony is crammed between Senegal to the north, Guinea to the south, Mali to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west. It's one of the most impoverished countries in the world as the majority of its people survive through subsistence farming.
Still, like other West African nations, they have their own musical history, and Kimi Djabate, is one of the contemporary links in a chain that extends back in time hundreds of years. Centuries ago his ancestors had been traveling musicians from Mali. The king, of what was then Guinea, loved their songs so much that he invited them to stay and offered them the territory of Tabato, where Djabate was born. Born into a family of Griots - musicians who are keep track of their tribe's history and tell the stories of the people through song - Djabate started playing music when he was three years old. His first instrument, the balafon (a type of xylophone), remains his primary instrument to this day. However as his forthcoming release, Karam July 28, on the Cumbancha label shows, he's expanded his repertoire of instruments to include guitar and various types of percussion.
At the age of nineteen, in 1994, while touring Europe as part of the national musical and dance ensemble of Guinea-Bissau, Djabate decided to settle in Europe and has based himself out of Lisbon in Portugal ever since. Listening to the fifteen tracks on Karam, all of which he wrote, one can hear that while he has stayed attached to his musical roots, he has also reached out to graft on some new branches to create his own sound. While still at home he had been sent off to neighbouring territories to learn some of the regional differences available close at hand, but he also took it upon himself to learn about music that was from even further afield. Since landing in Europe he's continued that musical education and now you can hear traces of everything from Nigerian Afrobeat, blues, jazz, to Cuban being used when appropriate to the material at hand.
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