SALIF KEITA
Giant of all times in African Music
Trend setter for the past 55 years, Salif Keita has marked his career time after time with world hits of Afro Pop. Not only due to his remarkable voice, often referred to as The Golden Voice of Africa.
Salif Keita's stardom was manifested since his early recordings, and now, 5 GRAMMY Nominations and 75 albums later, including the Joe Zawinul production AMEN (Island Records 1991), TALÉ (Universal Music France 2012), and the latest UN OTRE BLANC (Naïve 2018), his legacy to African music history is indisputable.
He is descent from the founder of the Mandingue Empire, Sundiata Keita. His albinism (absence of melanin in his skin) influenced his youth as he was partially rejected by other children. Moreover, he was not able to become a teacher because of the poor eyesight caused by his depigmentation. His desire to become a musician led his father to reject him since a member of a noble family wasn’t supposed to live as an artist.
In 1968, Keita left for Bamako, the capital of Mali and there began his first band, the Rail Band de Bamako, which became the orchestra of the train station’s hotel. In 1973, he founded a new band, Les Ambassadeurs, but in 1978, he left Bamako for Abidjan, the capital of Cote d’ Ivoire, and recorded his first album there, Mandjou, in which he praises the Mandingue culture as well as the Guinean president of the time, Sekou Touré, who decorated him few months before. This album was a major success in Western Africa and led to Keita’s first significant international recognition.
In 1980, Keita went to the United States to record “Primpin” on the Album Tounkan. Five years later, in 1984, he participated in the Festival des Musiques Métisses at Angoulême in France. His successful concert there brought him to Montreuil, the Parisian suburb that is the heart of the Malian community in France. In 1985 he also participated in Manu Dibango’s song “Tam Tam pour l’Afrique,” which help alert the West to Ethiopia’s famine crisis.
In 1987 Keita released a new album, Soro, the success of which garnered him an invitation to appear in the London, UKconcert for Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday. His two albums in 1988 and 1990, Ko-Yan and Amen produced by Carlos Santana, allowed Keita to call for inter-cultural exchange and understanding. In 1990 he also created the association “SOS Albinos,” to help Albinos victims of oppression in Western Africa. He praised Mandela and pan-Africanism in his last album recorded in France, Folon (1995).
Salif Keita returned to Bamako in 1996 to open his own studio (Moffou) in order to help local young artists. In 1999, he went to Festival de Cannes to promote the only African movie of the competition, and released a new album with Grace Jones titled Papa, which allowed him to honor his father. In 2001, Keita opened a club in Bamako, also called Moffou, and released an album of the same name. In 2004 following three giant concerts in Bamako attended by thousands of fans, he received a Kora Award (African Grammy), and was nominated as “UN ambassador of Sport and music,” to mark his importance in the African musical world. The international recognition continued in 2009 with a "Victoire de la Musique" (French Grammy) for his album “La Difference,” and his designation as a “Peace Ambassador” by the African Union in 2010.
Biography
Salif Keita was born August 25, 1949, Djoliba, Mali. As singer-songwriter he known for blending elements of a wide range of local African—especially Mande—music traditions with jazz, rhythm and blues, and other international popular-music styles to pioneer the Afropop dance-music genre.
In spite of a noble lineage tracing back to Sundiata Keita, the 13th-century founder of the Malian empire, Salif Keita grew up as an outsider in several important respects. First, he was raised not in an environment of royal affluence but in a poor farming household. Second, owing to his albinism—a condition traditionally viewed as a harbinger of misfortune—he found himself a pariah, rejected by both his family and his community. His choice to pursue music, moreover, violated the occupational prohibitions of his noble status and, consequently, distanced him even farther from his family.
When he was 18 years old, Keita moved to Mali’s capital, Bamako, and began performing as a singer in nightclubs. After about two years, he joined the popular government-sponsored group Rail Band, notable for its electrified mixture of traditional Mande music and Afro-Caribbean popular styles. In the early 1970s Keita and Rail Band guitarist Kanté Manfila left for Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, to join Les Ambassadeurs du Motel (later Les Ambassadeurs Internationales), a rival group that was similarly recognized for its fusion of local African traditions with internationally appealing popular genres. By the late ’70s Keita’s singing and innovative work with Les Ambassadeurs resonated strongly and positively beyond the boundaries of Côte d’Ivoire and Mali; for his ever-broadening fan base, he was the “golden voice of Africa.” Indeed, in 1977 Guinean president Sékou Touré conferred on him the National Order of Guinea, a prestigious honour. Keita reciprocated by composing “Mandjou,” a praise song for Touré and the people of Mali. The song was accompanied melodically by guitars, organ, and saxophone—a combination that had by that time become Keita’s signature sound.
In the early 1980s Keita moved to Paris to pursue a solo career. His highly successful debut album, Soro (1987), was a remarkably adventurous work, tapping stylistic elements from American and European rock and pop music, jazz, funk, and rhythm and blues and fusing them with Mande music, especially hunters’ songs. Of several albums released in the 1990s, Amen (1991) was the most enthusiastically received. Keita returned to Bamako in 2001 and released Moffou to great acclaim the following year. For the album, Keita recorded with numerous guest artists representing a broad spectrum of African and non-African acoustic traditions.
As one of several family members who had experienced firsthand the challenges of albinism, Keita established in 2005 the Salif Keita Global Foundation, an organization dedicated to raising awareness of the struggles of albinos and to ensuring their equitable treatment in all societies. He addressed his own albinism in his 2009 release, La différence, a musical celebration of difference. Proceeds from the album were donated to his foundation. Talé (2012) incorporated trance, dub, and hip-hop and featured collaborations with Bobby McFerrin and Esperanza Spalding. With the release of the personal and transcendent Un Autre blanc (2018; “Another White”), Keita announced his retirement from recording in order to devote himself more fully to his foundation.
DISCOGRAPHY
1987 Soro Mango
1989 Ko-Yan Mango
1991 Amen Mango
1992 Les Ambassadeurs Internationales / Rounder
1995 Folon Fontana / Island / Mango
1996 Rail BandMelodie
1997 Seydou BathiliSonodisc
1999 Papa Blue Note
2000 Les Nuits de BamakoMelodie
2001 SosieMellemfolkeligt
2002 Moffou Decca
2004 Remixes from Moffou Emarcy
2004 Madan ExoticUniversal Distribution
2005 M'Bemba Universal International
2006 The Lost Album White Swan Records
2010 LaDifférence Emarcy / Universal
2012 TaléEmarcy / Wrasse
2018 Un Autre BlancNaïve
2022 MoffouDecca