Afel Bocoum - Tabital Pulaaku

LISTEN: (Look at "Listen Tracks")


During the course of the centuries, in the Sahel region which is wet by the abundant waters of the inner Niger delta, big western African civilizations arose, the Malinke empire, the Songhai empire, the Segou Bambara empire, the Hausa empire of Sokot, the Fulbe empire in Macina region and the Tukolor empire. Incredible stories of ancient cultures and victorious battles, cancelled in ten years by the French colonialists and forever removed from the Westerns memoirs who today are still trying to understand and recognize the cultural and human richness of these civilisations.

The Peul are one of those populations. Between the 18th and 19th century the Macina kingdom, the Sokoto kingdom and above all the Tukolor Kingdom of El Hadji Omar which reached the peak of development and played a crucial role in the islamization of the Sudan area. They are also called Fulbe or Fulani, mostly known for their nomads’ herdsmen activity, for the transhumance of the animals and also for the beauty of their women. They are spread throughout all West Africa from Senegal to Nigeria and in Guinea they amount to almost half of the population.

Afel Bocoum is Peul from Niafunke, a sand village on the margins of river Niger almost ten kilometres from Tombouctou. Niafunke is also the place where late Ali Farka Toure spent most of his life, where he invested a large part of his income, beginning when he won the Grammy, rewarded with the album Talking Timbuktu together with Ry Cooder. He invested in irrigation works, electricity and in agriculture.

Afel began playing in Ali Farka Toure's band when he was 13, therefore one could say the "donkey" of Niafunke, this is how they would call Ali, has been for Afel a real teacher. Not only music wise but also he inspired him to become an upright and spiritual man. He taught him not to be seduced by illusory values and to remain thankful and to love his land and his culture..

Tabital Pulaaku is his third album, released this year after Niger dated 2006 and after Alkibar his debut album dated 2001. It is Peul music, but also Songhai. Close to him we constantly find the same musicians and same friends. Directed by Hama Sakare, one of the most extraordinary musicians of the old ensemble of Ali Farka, the big calabasse becomes even more aggressive than an ensemble of percussions, and together with the bass of Barou Diallo gives life to a deep groove over which the njarka - a one string violin - of Kipsi Bokoum, the njurkle - the four string lute - of Yoro Cisse and the second guitar of Manmoudou Kelly interlace their themes of sounds. The result is a massive and inexorable sound within which the intense voice of Afel introduces itself and vibrates in the throat and nose to which the chorus responds to, and his ability in playing the guitar; clean, rough and essential.

Immigration
Affluence has created a rift in society
I cannot but mention this disapointment
Watch out, the world is in turmoil

At the start, the countries of the north spoke of cooperation
At the end, they speak of immigration
They point their finger at us
But that's not bad.
Because it's not an accusing finger
It's a finger encouraging awareness

The Spain that exists in your head
Is a far cry from paradise
And its sea is merciless

Count the number of your dead
Along its coasts
And you will realise
That there is no place
Like home

We have always highlighted poverty
Now ask yourselves
How and at what price
Did the North achieve this level
That you envy so terribly?
It is certainly possible to create
Better living coniditions here at home
Just by changing our behaviour

We have land
We have animals
We have water
We have our culture
We have intellectuals
All that remains is for us to become
Conscious of that.

Everybody should be mobilised
Marabouts, heads of villages
To make the youth of Mali aware
They who are our contry's future

Chorus: In life, everything comes and goes
But it's true at present we are suffering here


Fina Tawa
This song speaks about Bankaina, the hellhole.
This strange place is situated 4km north of Niafunke, in the village of Ngoro.
Bankaina is known for its extraordinary capacity for perception of all voodoo events taking place across the world.
Voodoo is an ancestral heritage, cloaked in mystery, practiced since the beginning of time.
It predicts the future, good or bad
It breaks evil spells
It cures certain illnesses
It protects travellers.
But contemporary society, and above all our young people, want to grasp the precise outlines of this occult science.

The point of no longer being satisfied with vague answers and well-kept secrets.
meanwhile, it is also our original patrimony and we cannot renouince it nor completely reject it.
We have to reconcile our ancestral heritage and modernity.
We must do everything to safeguard our traditions and make people aware of the importance of leaving written testinony of our culuture and history.

Choir: Let's devote ourselves to work, it is our only way out.


There is a music that plays out of time, as sculptures on granite or sandstone. There is a music that evokes vividly images of its own birth places as if they were truthfully dreamt from earth. There is a music that is essential and that does not contain anything that is useless, just like the lives that tightly are tuned with a hostile nature, the Malian territories where the dry and stony Sahel gradually turns to Saharan sand, slowly moving forward.

This is the case of Afel Bocoum and his Alkibar, the rivers' messengers, the big Niger that placidly crosses the desert without drying. Each of their albums is a new little masterpiece. Both for the music and the lyrics - in Peuhl, Songhai and Bambara - it is not keen in flattering, it doesn't linger, it is coherent with their own roots and with the example left behind by Ali Farka Toure, it is full of energy and it excites.


VIDEO:
Afel Bocoum & Alkibar Gignor - Hommage ad Ali Farka
marzo 2007
Video recorded at Niafunke, for the Celebration of ali Farka Toure, one year after his death.




Listen Tracks:
1. Tabital Pulaaku
2. Diadie
3. Fina Tawa

Author: Afel Bocoum & Alkibar
Title: Tabital Pulaaku
Year: 2009
Label: Contre Jour

Tracks:
1. Mali Men - 3'44
2. Tabital Pulaaku- 3'37
3. Immigration - 4'20
4. Soku Sondu - 4'06
5. Sambe Sambe - 3'28
6. Diadie - 4'22
7. Allah Tanu - 3'13
8. Fina Tawa - 4'44
9. Gando - 4'32
10. Hassey - 5'34
11. Waaju - 4'34
12. Turi Gna - 4'53