On my first morning in Bamako, Mali’s capital, I awoke to the strings of the kora, the country’s national instrument, being played outside my window.  A serenade?  The plucked strings, so quiet, so intimate, unaccompanied by voice or other instrument, aroused my senses and my curiosity.  I peeked outside my window onto the dusty street below and saw an old man, gracefully seated on the corner pavement, playing a very beautiful instrument.  The body, a calabash severed in half and stretched with a skin, was attached to  a long neck with 21 strings tautly stretched like a ship’s rigging.  Glorious.

Toumani Diabate is the master of the kora.  Descended from a griot family, the traditional storytellers of his people, he has been playing nationally and internationally for years and is hugely respected.  A soloist performer as well as part of a group, he has teamed up with the likes of the late Ali Farka Toure.  My most favorite album is The Mande Variations, a gorgeous virtuosic adventure into kora rhythms that reminds me so much of Keith Jarrett’s piano in The Koln Concert.