The cherry who dreamed of becoming an airplane pilot. This could be the title of Djely Tapa’s biography. Born in the Malian town of Kayes near Senegal, within a family guardian of Mandingo traditions, she saw in the trajectories of these machines across the sky the expression of freedom, a notion of which she made a of the foundations of his approach.
In Canada, she found a land that fits with her personality as a 21st century pioneer, and an energy conducive to embarking on a conquest of the musical West. When she took the plunge with a first personal project in 2019, she was able to count on an accomplice on the same wavelength, the renowned Chadian DJ AfrotroniX, to realize her ideas and formalize this “afro-futurism” that she claims.
Baroque produced its effect, opened doors, obtained distinctions, and put in Tapa’s path another renowned producer-director in Canada: Jean Massicotte, known for his work with artists such as Pierre Lapointe, the American-Mexican Lhasa or the Frenchman Arthur H. From their first attempt on the piece But Spiritadded to the Deluxe version of the album in 2020, the singer understood that it was the ideal partner for “develop [ses] ideas, deepen them” on a second album. “I needed cultural differences to bring about this duality that is in me“, she explains.
Traditional instruments
In Mali, for a month, she gathered the raw material for the twelve pieces of Dankoroba. “With Caleb Rimtobaye (AfrotroniX, NDR)we were inspired by instruments from Mali with synthesized sounds. This time, I wanted to really have them, and for people to feel the attachment to my origins“, specifies Djely Tapa. Some rare specimens, if not endangered, can be heard, such as the sokou, cousin of the violin, or the n’dan, with its six strings and as many necks. On his return from the On the other side of the Atlantic, sitting next to her partner, she gave him the freedom to suggest what he heard, even if it meant cutting out certain rhythms, putting them back together, juxtaposing them, transforming them…
This propensity to accept a form of musical distance from her roots – which she shares with her fellow guest Vieux Farka Touré heard two years ago with the Texan psych rock group Khruangbin – comes from her mother, she assures. . “Don’t close yourself“, repeated Kandia Kouyaté, one of the most respected traditional singers in Mali, to whom she pays homage in Mamanto thank her for her constant encouragement. “In our dialect, we say that taking care of a child is more important than bringing it into the world“, explains Djely Tapa. Even if the latter says to herself “lucky to have a musically very open mother“, the two women do not necessarily find each other, particularly on electro, a question of generation. “The main thing is to know if what you are doing will be useful: will your music do good to the person who listens to it? Will this make him think“, keeps reminding him of the mother figure.
Powerful women
The message got through, and Dankoroba bears many traces of this desire to present a certain vision of the world. Starting with the title song, which evokes the sumusso, these powerful and influential women of the Mandinka Empire. “I am the heir of powerful women, enlightened women who defeat intriguers“sings the one who also highlighted female characters in the glorious history of Mandé on the acoustic version ofAlou Maye for which the Ivorian reggaeman Tiken Jah Fakoly, a long-time friend, invited her at the beginning of the year.
It is a less distant and more personal past that she summons in No. This song has haunted her since childhood, she says in substance: the memory of this boy from the Koranic school, a street child who is called talibé in Senegal and alimoudo in his region of Mali, who came every midday to his family to ask for food. He was roughly the same age as her. “I never forgot the sadness I felt in his eyes“, confides Djely Tapa. “What is the fault? Poverty or greed? Lack of education or lack of vision?“question the words of the piece she devotes to it. Through this cry from the heart, which expresses her concerns, we glimpse one of the reasons which led her to accept, twenty years ago, the responsibility of being the griotte of her community in Montreal: to contribute to the good -be collective by playing a social role, in your art and beyond.
Djely Kill, Dankoroba (Nights of Africa / Believe Records) 2024
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