The opening weekend of the EFG London Jazz Festival, and Malian diva Fatoumata Diawara was at the Royal Festival Hall, firing off electric guitar riffs and singing in her native Bambara about lost childhoods, women’s rights and precious manuscripts from Timbuktu. Majestic in a high-rise head wrap and white robe with brocade vestments, she began with elegant slow-burning tunes from her current third album Maliba, building tension until she was dancing, pogoing and, wrap unravelled, flailing her long braids about. “Get down London!” she commanded, blowing a whistle hanging around her neck, and we did.
The Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, guitarist, actress and activist has long embraced modernity as well as tradition, splicing an edgy rock aesthetic into the pentatonic melodies and sensuous, raspy tones of Bambara music. Hugely charismatic, Diawara has played major festivals including Glastonbury, worked with the likes of Gorillaz, Herbie Hancock and Cuban jazz pianist Roberto Fonseca and formed a super group of Malian artists to record a song calling for peace in her troubled West African homeland.
This new show, performed on the heels of its wildly successful debut at the Norwegian Opera House during this month’s Oslo World festival, saw Diawara’s guitars-keys-drums line-up augmented by a string quartet and a hip-swivelling Latin horn trio whose improvised solos and passages of call-and-response with the band kept the jazz-rock vibes at a premium.
The seven original songs on Maliba - a record made in collaboration with the Google Arts & Culture platform - commemorate the historic Timbuktu manuscripts, documents representing the long legacy of written knowledge and academic excellence in Africa, many of which were destroyed in 2012 by Al-Qaeda-linked rebels ravaging Mali’s north. Diawara brought Timbuktu to warm, vibrant life on tunes such as Kalan and One Day, looping her voice with a stomp of her guitar pedal, triggering her own backing vocals between decrying the Islamists who would ban education, travel and music, Mali’s lifeblood.
“I am proud to be the first woman to represent Malian cultural preservation,” said the Italy-based mother-of-two, finishing Sini (Tomorrow) with a raised fist and warrior-like ululation. “I dedicate this to our children.”
A voice-and-guitar ballad, Don Do, offered pause. An Ka Bin’s jittery Malian rhythms included a psychedelic wig-out from keyboardist Arecio Smith. Diawara let loose on her infectious 2018 hit Sowa, shredding as she paced the stage, sticking out her tongue in a guitar face-off and removing her Fender to explode in a frenzy of dance. A second encore began with Diawara’s face obscured under a scarf, her movements trance-like as - brandishing sacred wands - she channelled her ancestors, flexing her ancient-to-future credentials before boom! there she was again. Smiling, singing, getting down. Thanking us for coming.
