Kora Master Hypnotizes Cafe Nine

The chitchat at Cafe Nine on Wednesday might have been getting a little intense, but a flourish of notes from the 21-string kora of Madou Sidiki Diabaté was enough to silence them. 

One by one the voices died down as Diabaté floated phrase after mesmerizing phrase into the air — modern yet informed by a West African culture thousands of years old. 

Diabaté was part of a double bill that brought a healthy-sized crowd to the club on State and Crown to bask in music new and old.

Kudzu Queen — Jess Jones on vocals and guitar, Andrew Argraves on cello, and Terron the Light on cajón — opened the night with what Jones revealed toward the end of their set was their first public gig. It didn’t sound that way. 

Most of Jones’s songs weren’t about the usual subject matter of love and relationships, but about ecology, starting with the name of the band itself. Jones explained that kudzu, native to Asia, had been brought to the United States as feed for cattle, only to grow ​“out of control” all over the South. What if we could find another way to live with it. ​“What does it mean to connect with the land where we are?” Jones asked.

As Jones’s fingerpicked guitar and Terron’s cajón created textured rhythms, Argraves used his cello to serve alternately as bass and solo instrument. The space the musicians created in the music left ample room for Jones’s expressive, at times acrobatic voice and dense lyrics, ready to unfurl complex stories. There was a song about the difficulties of gardening, another about the ability of rain to replenish. Jones won the crowd over with a disarming charm between songs and a playful, witty way with lyrics that lulled the listener in, only to deliver a gut punch or two. The band took a bow at the end of their set, but the crowd made Jones take an encore. It may have been their first gig, but it wouldn’t be their last.

Madou Sidiki Diabaté next took the stage with Gordon Hellegers, a.k.a. Salif Bamakora, for an exploration of the kora and a dive into West Africa’s deep culture. Diabaté, as Hellegers explained, came from Bamako, Mali to play a series of concerts with Hellegers, representing the 71st generation of his family of kora players. The kora is a 21-string harp, made from a large gourd, used for millennia not only in a venerable music tradition, but to convey ​“the oral history of the Mande people,” Hellegers said. 

“I’m really just a guest in this house,” he added, explaining that though he has been playing kora for over two decades, he’s a student of Diabaté, who is one of the world’s best kora players. Diabaté has played with giants of West African music like Baaba Maal and Salif Keita, as well as European artists like Damon Albarn and Brian Eno. He flooded the air at Cafe Nine with some of the most effortlessly rich music this reporter has heard in quite some time. (I regret to inform you the video I took ended up corrupted.)

The duo began with ​“Kaira,” a West African standard that Hellegers explained translates to ​“peace, sometimes happiness.” They ​“always touch a few notes of ​‘Kaira’ just to make that blessing.” As an opening song, it put Diabaté’s command of the instrument and its heritage on full display. The musicians exchanged smiles with one another as they played, supporting one another, but while Hellegers often remained deep in concentration, Diabaté directed his energy outward, toward the audience, often smiling at them as well. He quelled the audience into rapt attention.

Hellegers (the only English speaker in the group) also emphasized the deep cultural significance of the music they were playing. ​“There’s no night of Mande music without talking about Sunjata Keita,” the 13th century leader who brought together the Malian empire. The story of his many exploits was set to music centuries ago and could theoretically take days to perform, as an oral history was unspooled. 

“All that knowledge and information is contained in the music,” Hellegers said. ​“Would writing it in a book make it more true?” This brought him back to a new round of accolades for Diabaté. ​“Not everyone knows who he is” or ​“the significance of what he’s carrying,” but Hellegers over the years had learned to be in awe of it. Finishing one song, he said, ​“the history of this song could be a book all by itself.”

They touched on the song ​“Fama Dinka”; Hellegers conveyed the main theme as ​“don’t cry; crying is for people who don’t have anything,” and ​“you have everything you need.” This brought a round of applause from the crowd. ​“Thank you,” Hellegers said. ​“I think that applies to most people.” It applied to the people in Cafe Nine on Wednesday night without a doubt; two koras playing the yearning, beautiful music of an ancient culture was more than enough of a gift for anyone.