We keep on turning #wedraaiendoor: Habib Koité - Saramaya

 

Each Tuesday and Thursday Anne from Satur9's World and myself, play a musical pingpong game where we choose a new music song based on each other's previous choice by association of a name, style, lyric, style, location or whatever crosses in our mind. We never know what the next song will be chosen and are forced to explore beyond our comfort zone due to each other's choices.

 

You can find our in the mean time long and fun playlist on Spotify and op Youtube. Subscribing to it is possible!  

Well it's sometimes truly amazing how this series hops from style, continent, band, etc...All of a sudden  Anne catapulted us last Tuesday into South Africa with Nelson Mandela.  I realised that we had never really featured the African continent in our series so I really wanted to find some African music.  And no, not music from western musicians about Africa, neither succesfull diaspora...no music made on the African continent. 

So these didn't fulfill: 

• Eddy Grant - Gimme Hope Jo'anna
• Peter Gabriel - Biko
• Peter Gabriel - Youssou'n Dour - Soweto Gospel Choir - In your eyes

• Paul Simon - Diamonds on the souls of her fee 
• Sioen - Calling up Soweto
• Aster Aweke - Naftot   (quite a lovely discovery however!!)

I explored a different scenario and listened to prison songs: 

• Elvis Presley : Jailhouse rock
• The clash : I fought the law
• The Weeknd ft Lana Del Rey - Prisoner

And then I spent a couple of days listening to contemparary african playlists on Apple Music. I learned about the new hot artists such as Buju or Wizkid.  But since they were new to me, I wasn't easily convinced.  And YousN'Dour and Miriam Makebe were too easy choises. 

I knew what I was searching for already a long time but couldn't put my finger on it until I remembered my old CD's.   Yes, the music I wanted was somewhere in my old forgotten CD collection.  A search through them , made me finally recover my old-time chill favourite:  Habib Koité from Mali.   I possess multiple CD's and had completely forgotten about him in recent years. Aaaaah how fun to refresh and discover his latest albums...

It was hard to choose which song I'd feature but in the end I've chosen Saramaya. I hope you enjoy as much as I do.