The summer 2013 Welsh photo sessions with Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita that produced the cover image for the award winning album ‘Clychau Dibon’
PHOTO ESSAY – Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita: ‘Clychau Dibon’ Sessions
Subjects A-Z
An A-Z of subjects other than musician’s names
LES AMBASSADEURS – The story of Mali’s musical revolutionaries
Some bands score a few hits, some change the face of music and some end up defining a whole era. Les Ambassadeurs did all three.
NEW BOOK – FINDING THE ONE: The strange and parallel lives of the West African kora and the Welsh harp
In this pacey readable book, Andy Morgan tells the stories of two emblematic instruments, the kora and the Welsh harp, and how they fell into the hands of two great musicians, Seckou Keita and Catrin Finch.
MALI RAP – Talking rhymes with Presidents and Putschistas
“Don’t be surprised if it explodes one day!” When I met Mylmo I knew nothing about him except that he was rapper who was performing on the main stage of the Festival on the Niger that very night. I interviewed him in an empty restaurant on the banks of the great river – most…
JUPITER – Kinshasa’s rebel general stands tall
In the early years of that epic conflict known as the cold war, an Irishman wrote a funny-sad piece of theatre, a kind of excruciating fairy tale about a pair of old tramps who sat around waiting for this guy called Godot. Except that Godot wasn’t a person of course; he was an idea, a…
SIDI TOURE – Easy to listen to and easy to love…
When he was a child, Sidi Toure was told to go and hunt for bats in the Tomb of the Askia. On a good day, he and his harum scarum comrades could bring back ten or more, which made a tidy feast for the family. The monument wasn’t far from his home in the Sané…
SEYDOU CISSÉ of GANDA IZO – “We should have followed the MNLA from the start”
Here’s an amazing news story: http://maliactu.net/mediation-dans-la-crise-malienne-nous-preferons-ouaga-a-alger-dixit-moussa-ag-attaher/ On February 9th last, the MNLA and the Ganda Izo held a joint press conference in Ouagadougou and issued a joint statement announcing a future collaboration between the two movements. The two groups also expressed strong support for Burkina Faso’s mediation in northern Mali and denounced any attempts by…
PHOTO ESSAY – Niger Music
12► In February 2013 I traveled to Niamey in search of Niger music. I spent time and drank plenty of tea with some inspiring musicians and they gracefully allowed me to take photos of them. The honour was all mine
FINDING THE ONE (extract) – If your name is Keita, you’re still royalty
It was only after he’d started living in Europe and having kids of his own, that Seckou Keita started to wonder about his father. “I was in that mood,” he says, “I just wanted to find out.”
FINDING THE ONE (extract) – Meths, gunpowder and the revival of harp making in Wales
The news of Aberfan shocked him into a new awareness. What was the fire that had destroyed his workshop compared to the river of slurry and filfth that snuffed out the lives of 116 children? Not forgetting the 28 adults. Nothing. “People can loose more than I’ve lost,” he thought. Granted, his livelihood had been…
