Bembeya Jazz National - The nights of Conakry (2)

During the sixties and seventies Guinea was a light enlightening the dream of independence of African people. Sekou Toure was actively present in the liberation movement in Algeria, Palestine and Guinea Bissau, he created together with Nkrumah the African States Union. He envoyed a contingent in Congo against the separatists of Moise Thsombe, he was close to Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Gheddafi and Chou En Lai.

While years went by, the coup d’etats decimated the first post-colonial African governs. Just as an example, amongst the governamental friends of Guinea of Sekou Toure the first to collapse was Congo, where Patrice Lumumba was killed in 1961. In 1963 it was Sylvanus Olympio’s turn in Togo, then Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, in 1966, while in 1968 it was Modibo Keita’s turn in Mali.

Duing the night of 22 November 1970 the portoguese located in Guinea Bissau together with a group of Guinean protesters landed in Conakry with the intent to attack the prison of Camp Boiro, to take control of the national radio and to imprison Sekou Toure. Also thanks to the African Party for Independence of Guinea Bissau and Cap Verde, headed by the revolutionary Amilcar Cabral, in almost 24 hours Sekou Toure overthrew the output of the coup d’etat and got hold of the power in the capital. The president’s answer to this was a long speech to the population on the national radio, where he described proudly the reaction of the “guinean people” to the imperialist attack. That historical speech, enriched by the old socialist rhetoric, was pubbished on “Appels au Peuple”, of the Syliphone records. (SLP26)

The prisoners were justiced together with a group of “betrayers of the revolution” who were amongst the militaries and the civilians. Since then Sekou Toure was obsessed by the fear of conspirancy against his reign, infact launched a cruel repression against the “enemies of the people”. The shadows under the dictorship of Sekou Toure were stretching out longer.

The dragon and the African Song

The musical scene in guinea continued to vibrate and to produce music full of enthusiasm and hope all through out the seventies. After Regard sur le Passe the Bembeya Jazz National, lead by the guitar of Sekou “Bembeya” Diabate and mostly by the irresistible charisma of Demba Camara, produced for the Syliphone unforgettable albums, like Dix Ans de Succes (SLP24), recorded live in 71 at the Palais du Peuple, with the wonderful long version of Super Tentemba, and Authenticite 73 (SLP39).

Demba Camara, nick named “le dragon de la chanson africaine” or also “waraba”, the lion, did not come from a griot family, but he possessed the treasure each griot looks for, that one thing that in the mandengue Africa is called the magic gift of the voice and of the word, that has the power to influence the emotions of people. It seems like his extraordinary communication skills, mostly perceived in live recordings, envolves the audience as soon as he arrives on the stage. Demba was a real show man, the origin and the substance of the live performance of Bembeya Jazz. Thanks to his presence, the other musicians could exclusively concentrate on the music. Great dancer, great improviser, always at the head of the orchestra, what ever he sang and whenever he would dance wildly to the tentenba rhythm, he would stand out.

One day Demba was at the Coya market, at 50 km from Conakry. An old woman reading the future in the seashells had told him that Bembeya Jazz would have an accident and therefore suggested a ritual sacrifice. 100 CFA francs of kola nuts for each member of the band together with the prayers, maybe allowed Demba to remain unhurt when his sidecar was run over by a car, a few days from his return to the capital, but evidently the spirits were not satisfied.

A few weeks later, just when the triumphant tour in Senegal finished, Bembeya Jazz received and invitation to play at the private residence of the Minister of Youth in Dakar. The orchestra did not have the instruments with them, so the Minister ordered them from Italy. The delivery of the instruments took some days. When they returned to Dakar the driver of the Minister was waiting for them, he was quite excited and nervous about this and one could tell by his nervous foot over the accelerator of his peugeut 504. Sekou Bembeya was next to the driver, and Demba and Salifou Kaba were sitting in the back. During the crazy drive through the roads of Dakar a wheel touched the sidewalk, the car turned around more thatn once, Demba Camara was thrown out of the car hitting violently his head and consequently his skull and his chest had a few fractures. He died after four days of pain in hospital. It was 5 April 1973.
In Guinea, national mourn was declared, during this period all artistic activites were stopped. At the official funeral of Aboubacar Demba Camara, where all the heads of West African States were present, more than one hundred thousand people dressed in white accompanied his body to the cimitery of Camayenne, while the trumpets of Camp Boiro were playing Boloba, the hymn for brave warriors.

Market women’s rebellion

In the meantime Ahmed Sekou Toure’s Guinea was drowning into the economical crisis and into violence against those who were thought to be the guilty planning against him. It was not only the non dominant ethnies who were victims of all this, like the peuls, but also state functioners, friends, the President’s advisors and the entire guiean population. Camp Boiro became a real concentration camp where in the following years thousands of political prisorers were tortured and killed accused of high treason.

During the seventies the country progressively interrupted the relations with the other “friendly” African countries. The abuse of power was becoming too much.
The members of the entourage of the president were selected only on the basis of “loyalty” to the dictator.

One morning in June 1977 a Finance squad broke into the market of N’Zerekore to impose the interdiction of private commerce. The reaction of women, starving to death, was immediate and decise, the militaries were not expecting this. Many people were injured, but the “rebellion of the market’s women” did not stop. The residence of the Rural Developement of the region was assaulted and the protest soon spread to the nearby cities of Macenta, Gueckedou, Kissidougou and Byla and up to Kankan.

It was Conakry’s turn on 27 August. The women of Mbalia’s market rose up against the agents who were strip-searching the stands, they assaulted the central police station and marched against the presidential palace. Sekou Toure decided to meet up with the commerciants of the Palace du Peuple, but as soon as he started his speech, he received a series of accusations.

Dragon’s orphans

When Demba Camara died the Bembeya Jazz fell into an abyss of sadness. Demba was not substituted and Salifou Kaba became the first singer until 1980 when Sekouba Bambino Diabate joined the orchestra “le petit de Siguiri” as he was called by Sekou Toure, who reccomanded him personally as substitute to Demba. Today Bambino is one the biggest stars in West Africa.

From 1973 Bembeya Jazz didn’t publish any new alum for other four years. In 1974 the Syliphone, issued the wonderful Memoire de Aboubacar Demba Camara (SLP44), a collection of some of the biggest hits of the orchestra and some other unpublished songs, like the extraordinary Ballake. It appears this song was an ancient traditional song coming from Beyla. Bembeya Jazz published this for the first time in 1970, entitled Beyla, on the Guinee an X collection – Orchestres Nationaoux (SLP8). The song was a success and the audience would ask for it each time the band came on stage, but Bembeya never played it, as it was a song linked to an obscure prophecy; whomever would sing it would die earlier “with black hair”. For this reason, during the song Demba Camare evokes “black haired death”. But one night, less than one year before his death, during a concert in Conakry, the lion decided to sing it. The people in the audience who knew the prophen stayed wordless.

In 1976 Defi was releasd (DLP59), La Continuité (SLP61) and the collection Discotheque ’76 (SLP66) almost entirely dedicated to Bembeya Jazz. Listening to the song Petit Sekou one can understand how the leadership of the orchestra was fully in Sekou Bembeya Diabate’s hands, the extraordinary guitarist who was already nick-named Diamond Fingers, for his fabioulous art.

Without Diamond Fingers, Bembeya had no way out. His unmistakable style, based on the transposition of balafon technique and of the kora over the electric guitar, had studied in Guiena, but in the whole of West Africa, bringing the mandengue guitar at a high level also comparable to Franco Luambo, Dr. Nico and Tabu Ley.

Notwithstanding Sekou Diabate’s personality, Bembeya Jazz’s groove was affected by external influences like the Congolese soukous, up to the point that in 1980 the electronic sonorities of the keyboards, of the drum machine was not pleasant and maybe also kitch. Also Bambino’s voice could not make the orchestra’s sound fly high. It however stayed an institution but more for the past than for the flat present.

Night over Conakry

It is not easy to judge Sekou Toure’s actions. Kapuscinski wrote in this book The first war of football :”It has been Lumumba and Nehru’s drama, Nyerere and Sekou Toure’s drama. The dramatic essence is the tremendous resistance towards the subject for each one of these men had to deal with, steps to be taken at top levels. They do want something good, they start doing it and after one month, one year, three years they realize that everything drowns into the sand. Eveything blocks their path: the secular backwardness, the primitive economy, illiteracy, the religious fanatism, the tribal blindness, the cronical hunger, the colonial past with it’s politics of keeping the vanquished under the oppression and ignorant, the blackmail of the imperialists, the greedeness of those corrupt, the unemployment, the passive balance accounts. In these conditions, progress becomes a desperate endeavor. The politician begins to struggle, he seeks within the dictatorship a way out. The repression generates resistance and resistance generates coup d’etats. And the cycle repeats”

During the last years of his govern, under the pressure of international accusations by Amnesty Internaational, Sekou Toure shifted slightly towards a dictatorship more calm, abandoning marxims and getting always closer to muslim-africa, until he reached the point of proclaiming Islam the state religion.

The lights of the Guinean golden orchestra’s era turned off together with the decease of Sekou Toure on 27 March 1984 in Cleveland, where he was hospitalized for serious heart problems. The truth on the atrosciousness of the regime in Guinea, just like the massacre of Camp Boiro, came out just after his death. But the mud that covered every single thing did not manage to dirty that music, the agile arpeggio of Diamond Fingers and the intense voice of Demba Camara.

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Bembeya Jazz National - The Nights of Conakry (1)

The period that runs between the sixties throughout all the seventies can be described as the Golden Era of African Music. The whole continent was at time going through an extraordinary moment. One after the other the sub saharian countries were conquering their independence, after centuries of submission and for the first time leaders had to cope with the dream of an African renaissance, an announced and much awaited parable. It’s ascending phase was lead by visionary heads of states like the Senegalese Leophold Senghor, the Congolese Patrice Lumumba, the Malian Modibo Keita, the Tanzanian Julius Nyerere and firstly Nkwame Nkrumah from Ghana and Sekou Toure in Guinea Conakry.

Before the enthusiasm was turned off by the coup d’etat and by the drift towards the bloody dictatorship, the romantic post colonial African history had its poets and its soundtracks, that still today lively communicates the spirit. Just like images, music too can go beyond the limit where words can’t reach. The music of Bembeya Jazz National, maybe the most important African orchestra, reveals the dream of a continent.

Independence!

Guinea Conakry was the second African sub saharian country to obtain independence from the colonies just one year ater Ghana. In 1958 General De Gaulle proposed to the African colonies to chose between independence or to adhere to an African state confederation under France’s coordination. Sekou Toure, who at the time was the Independence leader, and was visiting Paris, replied proudly to De Gaulle that “there can not be dignity without freedom” and that Guinea “prefers to be free and poor rather than rich and in chains”. His assertion inflamed the African population with nationalistic proudness and sounded like a moral slap in the face of Europe, resulting in the immediate retreat of the French from Guinea. The French were rather angry and before leaving, they destroyed all the infrastructures they had built, from hospitals to electricity lines. In the dark, Conakry happily, almost naïvely and inconsciously says good bye to the last colonists. The independence was declared official on 2 October of that same year.

The first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumha called Osagyefo was a virtuous leader considered a giant by Africans. It was thanks to his “positive action”, made of civil disobendience, boycott and non cooperation that English government was forced to abandon the Golden Coast, also due to the pressure of the international community. First Ghandi then Nkrumah, English imperialism was on it’s knees and soon it had to provide independence to the remaining colonies.

Rebirth of the African music

Inspired by Nkrumah, during his first years of presidence, Sekou Toure dedicated a lot of energies to rebuild a dream. His socialist sovereignty was insipired first by Russia, then by Mao in China, promoting a cultural revolution which passed through the revitalization of it’s roots and culture. This is how the ballets became national ballets, orchestras became ensembles of traditional music, starting from Les Ballets Africains, whose director Fodeba Keita was nominated Minister of state.

In the same period the Ensamble Instrumental de la Radio Diffusion National was set up, making use of instruments like the balafon, the ancient malinke xilofone, the kora, a 21 string arp, the n’goni, a lute with 3 or 4 strings, and the traditional drums. Les Ballets National Djoliba. All three musical institutions included the presence of Djeli Sory Kouyate, the “voice of the revolution”, the “voice of Africa”, who’s charisma and singing capacities made him the maestro within the musical mandegue world.

The frist modern orchestra of Guinea was Syli Orchestre National. As opposed to the ballets and to the ensembles, the orchestras played modern music, using European and afro-cuban instruments, like the electric guitar, the winds, the Hammond, the drums and the congas. Their objective was to reshape the old colonial dance music like the valzer, foxtrot, rumba and beguine, by inserting traditional elements and rythms within the melodies and the lyrics.

Guinea’s musical choice was encouraged by creative and contagious popular propaganda. Shortly orchestras were appearing all over the country from Mamou to Faranna, from Kissidougou to N’Zerkeore. Most of them were economically helped by the government and became regional orcherstras.

During the mid sixties the Syliphone was formed, a state record company that in almost 20 years published the best of malinke-guienean music, with almost 100 titles. Syli of Syliphone means elephant, the symbol of the Democartic party of Guinea, the only political party existing in Guinea at the time.

Beginning in Beyla…

Beyla is a city located in the south-east forest of Guinea, 900 km from Conakary and not far from the border with Cote D’Ivoire. The local orchestra of Beyla was formed in 1961 around the personalities of young guitarist Sekou Diabate and the trumpet player Mohammed Kaba. Shortly they joined the orchestra of Salifou Kaba and Aboubacar Demba Camara, two young folks coming from Kankan, situated in the Wassolou, a region between Mali and Guinea, here music still continues to surprise us. The other components of the band were Sekou Camara on the second trumpet, Hamidou Diaoune on tenor sax, he was substituted later by the Beninese Clement Dorego and by Bangaly Traore, he replaced Abou Camara at the bass, Mory Conde on the drums and Chaka Diabate on the congas.

In 1964 the Beyla Orchestra arrived second after Kebendo Jass at the Quinzaine Artistique National, the yearly competition between dancing orchestras, and the following two years they arrived first. This is how the Beyla orchestra was then called in Conakry and became Bembeya Jazz National, taking its name from the river that passes through the city of origin.

The other 4 national orchestras were at the time Keletigue et ses Tambourinis and Balla et ses Balladins, coming from the Orchestre Paillote and from Les Jardin de Guinee. Both were born from the old Syli Orchestre National, Orchestre de la Garde Republicaine, that later became Super Boiro Band and Orchestre Feminie de la Gendarmerie, then later became Les Amazones de Guinee. Sona Diabate and Mah Sylla were the leaders of this band, it was made up of only women, really peculiar event in all of West Africa. This also shows the revolutionary sprit of the time in Guinea. Later during the seventies another orchestra was nationalized and also won two Quinzaine Artistique, la Horoja Band. Some say that later also Kaloum Star and 22 Novembre Band were nationalized, but this is not confirmed and appears very unlikely.

Artistic competition between orchestras was very common also in the neighboring countries, but maybe nowhere as much as in Guinea, which represented a strong motiviation towards improvement. The evolution and their progressive move towards tradional mandendge sonorities, of the three main orchestras, Bembeya, Balladins and Tamburinis is clearly visible in their albums. In 1969 Bembeya Jazz National surpass its competitors thanks to a song, Regard sur le Passe, a song that was first played at the first Pan African Festival in Alegeri by the Syli Orchestre National – re-established for the occasion – that won the silver medal, increasing the success of Bembeya Jazz and of Guinean music in all the African continent.

Regard sur le Passé is an arrangement of the mandengue epic Keme Burama which narrates the story of Samory Toure, Emperor of the Wassoulou, extraordinary tactician and leader of the battle, hero of the resitance to the French colonialization during the last year of 800 and – interesting detail – assumed progenitor of the president Sekou Toure. In 1898, after 18 years of resistance, Samory Toure was in the end captured by the French and exiled in Gabon where he died in prison on 2 June 1990. The song sang in malinke and narrated in French, hosts the balafon of the great Djeli Sory Kouyate in the pure jeli style, the griot who in the traditional society transmits the oral culture and the memory of the past from father to son. Published in 1970 by Syliphone (SLP10), Regard sur le Passe is on both the sides of the album, and still today is is the most representative musical recording of the mandengue epic, together with the Soundjata, by the the Rail Band of Mory Kante and with Koulandjan of Kasse Mady.

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