Toumani and Sidiki Diabaté: 'It's like an entire music industry in one family'

Take the bone-dry shell of a large gourd, a straight length of rosewood and a piece of cow or antelope hide, combine them with 200 years of craftsmanship and 21 strings, and you have the kora: sub‑Saharan Africa's most sophisticated native instrument. Then take a man or woman born to the task of reciting epic poetry from memory and picking the ripest words out of the air to praise or placate – now you have a griot: the hereditary bard of West Africa. Put kora and griot together, and you have the foundations of West African music and culture.

If your griot happens to be Toumani Diabaté, you'll also get a dazzling virtuosity that no other living kora player can match. Toumani's father Sidiki, who died in 1996, took the kora from Mali and put it on the world stage. Toumani in turn redoubled the instrument's popularity with a series of exquisite instrumental albums. He also married it with rock, blues, electro, flamenco and classical music, collaborating with artists including Danny Thompson, Damon Albarn, Taj Mahal, Björk and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. But this global reach can be a mixed blessing.

"I get lots of mail from people sitting in Europe, in America or Asia saying: 'Yes, Toumani, I love your music! I've decided to make a kora for myself and I wanted to know the names of the strings,'" he says. "But I say: 'Hang on a minute! That's not how it is.' I'm OK for people to learn how to play, but you have to come to the source to learn. You have to go into one of the families who guard the tradition of the kora, and follow the lines exactly."

Previously, the kora was a family affair. Griots are born, not made, and griot dynasties – such as the Diabatés – see themselves as the guardians of both the kora and an ancient oral tradition of history, poetry, craftsmanship, social etiquette and verbal dexterity. Griots believe that their story can be traced all the way back to a common ancestor: a black slave named Surakata, who lived in Mecca at the time of the prophet Muhammad.

Given Toumani's frequent assertion that the Diabaté line of griots stretches back through 77 generations, his decision to make an album of kora music with his son, also named Sidiki, seems entirely fitting. Yet father-son kora collaborations have been almost unheard of until now. What's more, griots are not generally very hands-on when it comes to passing on their skills to their children. Toumani never received a formal lesson from his father and has given very few to his son.

"When I was young, I didn't have any toys," 23-year-old Sidiki says, sitting in the plush salon of the Diabaté house in the Malian capital of Bamako. "My first toy was the kora, a little kora. It had seven strings. Toumani showed me the basics and left me to trace my own path. There were other people there to show me how to perform, how to speak, how an artist must behave and how to understand Islam. It's like an entire music industry in one family."

Despite the arm's-length relations between griots and their sons, Toumani felt a powerful desire to mark the arrival of the 78th generation of Diabaté griots in some public and meaningful way. He opted to record an album of duets, titled Toumani & Sidiki. It is his way of reaffirming the time-honoured methods of griot succession and kora education. "The knowledge of music, the talent, it's a divine transmission through blood, from father to son," says Toumani. "It's only in the griot families that one can see that."

Toumani also wanted to bring the instrument "back home", to reassert its musical soul. He feels that the kora – much like the guitar in the wake of Jimi Hendrix – has become a vehicle for finger gymnastics and empty displays of virtuosity.

"People today think that the kora is all about speed," Toumani says, "like a Kalashnikov firing off rounds … rat-tat-tat-a-tat-a-tat! But our forefathers, may they rest in peace, were great players and very fast too, but they preserved the melody. We can all do brrrrrrr [imitating a fast run] but it's not just about improvisation. Where's the melody?"

Many of the songs on the new album are very old; some were in the process of disappearing from the modern repertoire. Producers Nick Gold and Lucy Duran performed feats of musical archaeology, digging out old kora field recordings from the 1950s and 60s and presenting them to Toumani and Sidiki. Some of those long-abandoned tunes were a revelation to both father and son. It was as if their parents, grandparents and great grandparents were talking to them from the past.

The fact that Sidiki is also one of Mali's most successful hip-hop producers and artists gives a further twist to the story. Along with his friend and fellow griot/rapper Iba One, Sidiki is capable of filling stadiums such as the massive Modibo Keita football arena in Bamako with young hip-hop fans, something no other contemporary Malian musician can do. Only Mali's leading marabouts – Muslim holy men – have such pulling power.

"Thanks be to God that there are still musicians who can fill stadiums," Toumani says. "You cannot imagine a rap movement that has the power and the force of the rap movement in Mali today. My son has his way of playing the kora and I have mine. I didn't impose anything on him. We just mixed our styles together. This record showcases some very old songs but with today's new technique of playing. It's the past meeting the present for the future."

While some theorists like to claim that rap is a direct desendant of the West African griot tradition, relations between Malian rappers and griots have been strained, especially in recent years. Some of the country's more "conscious" rappers have expressed frustration with the griot tendency to flatter those in power in their lyrics. Sidiki disagrees.

"What we were taught in the family is that the griot is a good and righteous man," he says. "A griot is the friend, the confidant of his djatigui [patron]. He's all about peace, good messages, friendship, happiness. A griot that doesn't tell the truth isn't free, perhaps."

Because of the crisis that struck Mali in 2012 and 2013 – a combination of a Touareg rebellion in the north, the jihadist takeover of two-thirds of the country and a military coup that scuppered what was once considered a model African democracy – truth-telling is at a premium in Mali. Toumani sees his collaboration with Sidiki as part of the healing process.

To make an album of instrumental kora music more relevant in the febrile climate of post-conflict Mali, Toumani chose to give many of the traditional songs new titles, name-checking people and institutions that he felt had played a crucial role in preserving Mali's dignity. Politicians, benefactors, relatives, African migrants lost at sea, even a waste-disposal company are all honoured in this way.

But most urgent for Toumani, a devout Muslim, is to demonstrate the traditionally tolerant nature of Mali's predominantly Sufi-inspired Islam. This is particularly important to him after a much-reported ban on music imposed in the north of the country by Wahhabi militants, which lasted for 10 months, until the arrival of French forces in January 2013.

"No one has the right to give us any lessons in the Islamic religion," he says. "Mali is a country that's already rich in its Islam. So there's no point cutting off hands or feet, or abusing women or killing people. I pay homage to the holy men … and their families that are conceived around spirituality. They have nothing to do with that terrorist life, that violence. No. They're people who are pious and they invite everyone to [achieve] greater understanding and spirituality."