Monday Feb 23rd Slides
Boubacar Traoré:
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The Aesthetic: Acoustic, minimalist, and deeply rooted in Mande melody.
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The Marketing: Often branded as “The African Blues” for Western listeners.
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Does the Blues label help us understand the music? Or is it just marketing?
Modern Malian Funk: Amadou and Miriam
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Electric instrumentation, high-speed tempos, and global pop production.
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Maintaining identity while competing in the World Music marketplace.
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Is this a betrayal of the Griot tradition, or is it a 21st-century evolution of the djeli’s diplomatic mission
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The Pheno-song: The cultural code, the technique, and the “marketing” of the music. It is what we can easily describe and categorize.
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The Geno-song: The grain—the materiality of the body speaking its mother tongue. It is the friction between the music and the performer’s skin/lungs.
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When we listen to Traoré, are we hearing history, or are we hearing the physical grain that Barthes argues escapes traditional criticism?
Discussion Questions
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Identity: How does Traoré’s grain contribute to the construction of a pure Malian past compared to the polish of modern funk?
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Audience: Does the presence of electric instrumentation in Malian funk diminish the grain, or does it simply create a new version of it?
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Power: If the Sundiata is about the accumulation of energy, allies, and community, which performance style better captures that force for a modern audience?
# Wednesday Midterm Day