Consumer Guide Album

Salif Keita: Ko-Yan [Mango, 1989]
Even as an avowed enemy of his nation's caste system, Keita hasn't abandoned his royal responsibilities--he's exhorting Malians, or maybe West Africans, and hoping others will listen. Thus the lack of a lyric sheet is no great loss for world peace. The lead cut on the A, keyed to a Bambara word that means "at one and the same time life, fortune, power, reputation and the devil," and the lead cut on the B, keyed to a Bambara word that "refers at one and the same time to the King, power, alcohol and drugs," would be hard to translate into English not just linguistically but culturally, and except for the bitterly cryptic black protest "Nou Pas Bouger," everything else seems curious international fare. But in compensation, Ko-Yan corrects Soro's melodrama for groove. The music is still very much composed rather than created or spun out. But the production goes lighter on the atmospheric kora colors, the abrupt bursts of horn, the synch-simulated whistles and pans and balafon, with Keita's voice--often in tandem with a strong female chorus that sounds a lot less Hollywood this time--riding the rhythm in a nice compromise with the dance music Keita mastered leading the Ambassadeurs. And in the end this fusion may teach non-Malians as much about the complexities of modernization as his lyrics ever could. Anyway, isn't it pretty to think so? B+