Commentaries on Famoudou Konaté’s Book,
Mémoires d’un musicien africain
 
Jean-Charles François
2025

 

Sommaire :

Introduction
The Creation of the Guinea Ballets Africains
The choice to enter the Ballets Africains
The Ballets Africains, between Emancipation and Oppression
Artistic Independence Acquired Thanks to Teaching
Conclusion
 

Introduction

In 2022, Famoudou Konaté, “great representative of Guinea”s Malinke musical tradition”[1] published a remarkable book, Mémoires d’un musician africain, Ma vie – mon djembe – ma culture [Memories of an African musician, My life – my djembe – my culture], written in collaboration with Thomas Ott, who “was a university professor of music pedagogy in Berlin”.
 
Far for being a simple autobiography, the author offers a thorough account of the various artistic, social and political issues that an African musician had to face in the period from 1940 to the present day: growing up in a traditional village in Guinea, touring the world as an artist representing independent Guinea, learning to read and write as an adult, becoming a teacher in Guinea and Europe, to reflecting deeply on his own practice and the tradition in which it is embedded. Famoudou Konaté tells us with a wealth of detail and analysis about many aspects of his own life, touching on domains such as musical practice, ethnomusicology, African history, geopolitics, sociology of artistic practices, instrument building, playing techniques, pedagogy of oral music, and to unify it all, the presentation of a rich philosophy of life. However, this book has no pretention to be recognized as “academic”, anyone can have access to the global overview of his practice, with additionally numerous narratives, stories and tales, that illustrate with humor the artistic and autobiographical information.
 
In his introduction to the book, Thomas Ott explains its genesis. After learning to read and write while touring the world with the Ballets Africains, Konaté took the habit of writing “a great number of autobiographical notes (…) in French over many years” (page 15, my translation). Thomas Ott’s contribution to the book was to classify these notes, to translate them into German,[2] and assemble them into a meaningful form. He describes two happy turning points in Famoudou’s life:

1. Firstly, his selection to join the Ballets Africains representing Guinea as principal djembe player, while according to the village tradition, he had to get married and give up his musical practice.
2. And then, much later, he left the Ballets Africains, which had become for him an oppressive organization thus limiting the extension of his internationally recognized artistic posture. He then became an independent artist, thanks in part to the teaching of his music and culture in his village in Guinea and in European institutions.

At every turning point in Konaté’s life, the ambivalence that can be observed in any practice is revealed, requiring him to trace his own pathway among a weave of contradictions, enabling him to acquire a clear universal perspective in his multidimensional accounts. The conditions in which all actual practices are carried out is it occurs in obscurity, in the midst of elements that play against each other. As in improvisation, the actors have to trace their way for better or worse, starting from what was already built up, without having enough time to reflect in a rational fashion. But this path is not like writing, where each individual word weaves a global meaning with the series that has just been read and the one that is about to be read. In oral practice, the contradictions, the complexities, have to be faced in the present, and you must play with them off without thinking of the consequences. With a sufficient lapse of time, however, it is possible to write some reflexives notes and succeed in clarifying globally the uncertainties of circumstances. In this sense, practice is not consciously ideologic, even if the ideologies can be unconsciously expressed in the behavior of the human body.
 
Thomas Ott tells us that Famoudou Konaté’s music was for him “the bridge towards Africa in general”. He gives the following precisions:

True to the saying “Who only knows the music knows nothing about the music”, very soon I began to take an interest in Africa’s political, social and economic problems. (Page 19)

For my part, I will say that I don’t know Konaté’s music or the African music and dance very well, but thanks to reading his book, I have a more precise idea of what is globally at stake within these contexts, with all the useful information he gives on the musical, artisanal, political, social, economical and cultural aspects of his artistic practice and the links he is able to weave between all these domains.
 
 

The Creation of the Guinea Ballets Africains

In 1958, General De Gaulle’s government proposed to the French African sub-Saharan colonies their independence with an association within a “Communauté franco-africaine”. Only one country, Guinea, on Sékou Touré’s initiative (he became Guinea’s first president), rejected in a referendum this association. In less than two months, France withdrew all its administrative and economic support, thus ending all relationships.
 
In order to assert complete independence, Guinea needs to be recognized as a nation throughout the world. It absolutely had to affirm its African cultural identity and to develop diplomatic tools to represent it. This led to the creation of the Ballets Africains (based on the model of ensembles already in existence) bringing together the country’s best music and dance artists. The essence of the new nation has to be represented, its specific tradition, free from outside influences, in a single evening, at the end of which any audience will be able to understand what it’s all about. To achieve this, there seems to be no other choice but to conform to the laws of the dominant representation of the time, that is, the one determined by Western thought in both cultural manifestations and diplomacy. To create the spectacle of tradition therefore seems the means to achieve these objectives.
 
This task contradicting the village traditional practices may appear harmless, given that indeed it is the traditional ways that are presented on stage and not water-downed or completely distorted practices. Yet this small detail of formalization in order to be understood by those who lead the world, profoundly changes the name of the game. The point for me here is not to look for any kind of authenticity that might be found at the origin of a tradition. In fact, oral traditions have the capacity to constantly reinvent themselves according to events that take place. It’s simply a question of underlining the tension that exists between on the one hand asserting independence from the colonial power by focusing on autochthone cultures, and on the other hand asserting Guinea’s existence as a new nation on the international scene. Guinea then had to conform to the current formats: to become a nation, to adopt a flag, and to stage its identity in the forms invented by Western modernity.
 
In order to build the narrative of the Guinean nation, the cultural differences that might exist in the country have to be partially erased, and the practices must be detached from the global contexts in which they are embedded. This means inventing artistic acts that are separate from their social, political and cultural implications linked to the everyday life in the villages. People having predetermined social functions must be transformed into professional artists.
 
 

The choice to enter the Ballets Africains

Famoudou Konaté grew up in his village and was soon recognized for his great ability to play the djembe. He comes from a noble family, which determines his particular role in the village society. He describes this situation as follows:

In Hamana villages, all women, all men, and all children know to which group they belong and what their tasks are within the community:

The hörön (“the free men”) are the nobility. They govern. In the past, they decided on war and peace and were themselves great warriors. They regulate all aspects related to agriculture. But ultimately, they are responsible for the whole community in all its matters. (Page 91)

For Konaté, the other casts, the “artisans of society”, are divided into three groups: a) leather workers; b) griots; and c) blacksmiths.
 
Thomas Ott stresses in his introduction to the book that Famoudou Konaté would not have become a professional musician, if he had not been selected to be part of the Ballets Africains created at the time of Guinea’s independence in 1958. This was because members of noble families had to marry on reaching adulthood and were no longer allowed to practice music. Konaté writes:

Anyone called Coulibaly, Keïta or Konaté, as a upper-class member, is in fact not competent to play drum. In my family, he had to stop playing it as soon as he got married. Mamady Keïta and I became professional percussionists only because we were recruited to play in the big State ensembles. (Page 92)

Griots are at the same time historians, storytellers, genealogists, diplomats, counsellors, and musicians whose “working tools are words (language) and sounds (music)” (page 92). For him, in the tradition, the use of musical instruments is reserved to them, but music is not for them an “end in itself, but a means of expression in their multiple social tasks” (page 94).[3] According to Konaté, blacksmiths are the one who build djembes, and as such “the drummers often come from blacksmith families” (page 92), while griots are most often playing balafon or kora.
 
So here we have the first fundamental contradiction between respect for tradition and access to a certain modernity. Famadou Konaté, having already acquired a reputation as a great djembe player, had to choose between staying in his village and ceasing to play this instrument, or to become part of a world of live spectacle, were objects are created separately from everyday life, to be presented in a limited timeframe to an audience that is a priori “non initiated”. In the village tradition, the status of music remains ambiguous. The caste system predetermines roles, with the griots being obliged to be musicians, but as Konaté states above, music is not for them an “end in itself”, music is always inscribed in a global context. Yet there is no activity (work, ceremonies, festivities) without the very important presence of music. Learning music takes place outside any pedagogical method. There is no obligation to achieve a specified excellence, but reputations create hierarchies, comparisons and preferences. Famoudou’s reputation is that he is the best djembéföla in his village and beyond, but now he has to prove it to be recruited as a soloist in the Ballets Africains competing with all those coming from all parts of the country. The status of music changes when one movees from a highly localized context to the notion of a constituted nation: Konaté is not judged as an African man but strictly speaking as a musician. Saved by Guinea’s independence and the creation of the Ballets Africains, he can continue playing the djembe, his passion in life. Growing up in the tradition in which djembe playing is inscribed enabled him to come first in the competition to enter the Ballets, but through this act he became a professional specialist in the European sense of the term.
 
So, on the one hand, you have a village tradition that tends not to differentiate political and social aspects from religious, cultural and artistic expressions – quite opposite of Western rationalities that strongly specialize various functions and thought domains. On the other hand, the aim is to bring together the best musicians and dancers from this type of tradition on a national level. But Guinea’s vast territory is not culturally homogeneous, which means that it is necessary to create music that takes these differences into account. Even if the Ballets Africains practice of staging and setting music and dance remains completely oral, the reconciliation of differences creates a situation of a music that needs to be fabricated prior to the performance on stage. Famoudou cites the case of Arafan Touré, who was second soloist in the Ballets Africains, originating from Basse-Guinée, and having a completely different rhythmic approach, difficult to reconcile with his own playing (page 88). He also mentions the case of Mamady Keïta in these terms:

My relationship with Mamady Keïta was marked by a great friendship and mutual respect (…). He came from the village of Balandugu, near Siguiri, 150 km from Kouroussa. We both belong to the same Malinke culture, nevertheless there are a few musical and cultural differences between our two regions (Hamana and Wassulu), and neither of us had a perfect knowledge of the other’s culture. (Page 89)

 
 

The Ballets Africains, between Emancipation and Oppression

The second source of ambivalence in Konaté’s life can be found in the ways the Ballets Africains were effectively run, at once a source providing an opening onto the world, an international artistic success, and a repressive system that tended to reduce the members of the ensemble to an existence of servile executants. The opportunity offered by the Ballets represented an extraordinary privilege for a villager, but the working conditions were sometimes tantamount to an unworthy status as human beings.
 
The chance for Famoudou Konaté to be selected to be part of Ballets Africains goes far beyond the only fact that he could devote himself completely to the art of djembe playing. In the first place, during the 25 years he played with the Ballets Africains, he has taken great pride in representing to the world the culture of his country with the highest artistic levels of excellence:

As can be imagined, from an artistic point of view, a total dedication to our work and the highest quality of performance were expected from us, musicians and dancers. It was under this law that we had to present ourselves, as we had to bring honor to our country throughout the world. (Page 52)

The Ballets Africains have toured the world several times, only few countries were not visited by the ensemble during this period. According to Famoudou, this was an “enormous privilege” for Africans (page 65). It was an opportunity for him to compare different lifestyles and cultural attitudes, especially in relation to the division at the time between the Communist world and the West. It is also the opportunity to face up both to the immense success with audiences extremely interested in discovering world cultures, and to the prejudices and racist attitudes encountered in everyday life.
 
Above all, it was an opportunity for him to learn reading and writing, something that he couldn’t do as a child because there was no school in his village:<:p>

The numerous travels with the Ballets represented for all of us who had practically never left our home villages in Guinea, an enormous broadening of our perspectives. I found it particularly important to learn speaking and reading French, as I’d never been to school. That’s why I was grateful that we were given French courses on our first journey. (Page 97)

This enabled him to keep a rich logbook made up of meaningful reflections and anecdotes. Eventually, this allows him to write this autobiographical book based on all these notes accumulated through the years.
 
This immense international success, this opening onto the world, this access to education must nevertheless be paid for by the corruption of the Ballets’ direction, and the oppression of a system that severely limits the freedom of its members. Working conditions are often harsh, lodging undignified, and salaries too low for ensuring a normal life, with fines imposed for any infringement of the rules. Relationships between men and women within the ensemble were strictly forbidden, and an internal police force kept a watchful eye on the rooms to enforce this rule.
 
When the group was playing in the presence of President Sékou Touré, everything was going well, but otherwise the repressive system was in full swing, with its endless trail of intrigues. At a certain point, Sékou Touré improved the Ballets artists living conditions by granting them the status of civil servants. But after his death in 1984, the new power neglected artistic policies, and relations within the Ballets deteriorated considerably. It was at this moment that Konaté left this prestigious ensemble.
 
 

Artistic Independence Acquired Thanks to Teaching

Leaving the Ballets was by no means a simple thing to do, but little by little, Famoudou Konaté acquired his artistic independence. Above all, he established regular contacts with German university musicians who came to study with him in his village in Guinea, and who regularly invited him in Germany to give concerts and lead workshops. His contribution during the year 1990-2000 in the development in different countries of the abilities of non-African to seriously practice the music of his own culture is very substantial.
 
The idea of teaching djembe playing to adults who didn’t grow up in his tradition, although often educated in conservatories of “classical” European music, is a challenge for him: he has to develop a methodology that both stays within the orality framework and enables students to progress towards technical skills that are not separated from the musical and cultural meanings of instrumental playing.
 
Another challenge is that, in Guinea itself, social structures are in turmoil (urbanization, mining, influence of communication technologies) meaning that the young people tend to lose contact with tradition. Here too, in his concern to maintain alive and transmit his art, its ways of playing and the cultural context in which it evolves, he has to invent efficient methods for teaching in his own village and beyond in Africa.
 
In his approach to teaching djembe, Konaté had to invent methods appropriate to the diversity of the publics he addressed, whether Africans or Europeans. He had to invent them from scratch, because the notion of teaching didn’t exist in the village where he grew up: based on established models present in everyday life, each child had to develop his or her own playing without the help or supervision of anyone else. How to reconcile the idea, for those who are not inserted in this cultural world, of instilling principles, and of letting them gradually determine their own playing styles in an autonomous way. He describes the dimension of the problem in the following example:

In 1987, when I arrived in Germany and gave my very first workshops, I had enormous difficulties teaching the phrases of djembe solos. The reason was simple: the solos were not catalogued in my head in a way that would have enabled me to pass them on. The accompaniment phrases on the three lower drums posed far less problems to me. Little by little, I managed to systematize them and to teach them accordingly. What helped me was my experience with European students and their learning difficulties. I am very grateful to them for these exchanges. However, concerning the solos, it’s not sufficient simply to repeat what the master is doing. What you have to achieve is free and autonomous improvisation. (Page 239)

For him, what is at stake is “learning and teaching without pedagogy”, as one of the sub-chapter of his book is entitled. He draws a distinction between teaching music in European conservatories, centered on learning how to read and play notated scores (“certain students cannot play without having notated everything down beforehand”) and the oral character of his music which doesn’t separate the head from the body::

According to my experience, writing down notes is useful if you want to remember later what you’ve learned with the teacher. But in learning situations and in playing music, the head and the body should be entirely free. We Africans are accustomed to using the head and the body together. In the end, everything is recorded in our memory, and we master it through playing. If, instead, we were asked to play reading the notes, it would be for us a mental headache! (Page 236)

To be able to teach in a multicultural context that mixes orality and writing, he has to systematize his own rhythmic practices, while keeping in mind that people must absolutely go beyond the stage of this systematization to better achieve in a global manner the very essence of the music.
 
In this new phase in Konaté’s life, situations of tension between local tradition and globalized modernity again arises. The choices available go beyond a conservative option of maintaining tradition at all costs, or a progressive option which would consist in erasing them. In each case, a tortuous pathway must be traced through effective practices. In the village of his childhood teaching music or instruments didn’t exist, everyone had to find their own way based on stable, everyday conditions that seemed natural. In today’s world to which he is confronted, particularly in order to free himself from the Ballets Africains, teaching becomes a necessity, and learning has to be reinvented to both maintain tradition alive and to make it evolve strongly, within the framework of a silent tension, but in this case a very friendly one, between African and European conceptions.
 
 

Conclusion

It’s rare to find a book written by a practitioner of in which all the aspects relevant to various life contexts are addressed in three ways: a) a detailed description of what is at stake into the artistic practices; b) a very elaborated reflection on the meaning of the minutest elements of practice; and c) the account, often humoristic, but also dramatic, of real-life situations.
 
In this way, all the subjects are treated in depth: the history of his family, his childhood, his first steps with playing the djembe, colonial domination, the journey (going on adventure) to visit his brother. The Ballets Africains, the political context of independent Guinea, the tours all over the world, the working conditions in this ensemble. And then, the post 1987 period of artistic and teaching independence in Africa and Europe. In 1996, he became honorary professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.
 
Chapter by chapter, we also gain access to a critical description of his own culture: the social order in the village, the role of music and dance, the festivities, and the more problematic aspects such as excision and the rigid distribution of roles, especially between men and women. There is an important chapter on the “individual and social functions of music” (p.169-223), on instruments and the ways they are built, their techniques, their history and the various contexts in which they are used. The book concludes on a personal retrospective on the experiences he encountered and the reflections they have stimulated over time. He proposes a series of working pathways for the “conservation of African music” and maintaining its oral characteristics. For him, it’s a question of defining in a very universal sense who has the right to participate in this tradition: “music knows neither ‘races’ not colors” (p.239). The impact of modernity on traditions is also discussed, especially concerning the preservation of practices (recordings, videos) and the question of author’s rights. For Konaté, the confrontation between tradition and modernity is “mixed”. He talks about Africa’s economic problems, of traditional and modern medicine, of the evils of intensive tourism, of racism that he experienced in Europe and elsewhere, and of the “ecological living conditions, past and present.”

 

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