Rokia Traoré Lead Vocals, GuitarGiovanni Ferrario GuitarMamah Diabaté NgoniFatim Kouyaté Backing VocalsMoïse Ouattara DrumsKouamé Matthieu Nguessan Bass Guitar

Rokia Traoré “It’s clear that it’s inspired by rock music,” says Mali’s international star Rokia Traoré of her new album, Beautiful Africa. “But I didn’t want to make rock and roll in the Western tradition…I wanted something that’s rock and roll but still Malian and still me.”

The past year has been a quite extraordinarily productive period for Traoré. One of the most inventive female singer/songwriters in Africa today, she is remarkable not just for the range of her powerful and emotional voice but also for the sheer variety of her work. She has written three wildly different new sets of music: the acoustic Damou (Dream), the often bluesy Donguili (Sing), and the rock-influenced Donke (Dance), in which she set out to show “three different aspects of Malian culture and my own personality.” Produced by the UK’s prestigious Barbican, all three were performed at different London venues in one week last summer—a feat she repeated at this year’s Sydney Festival in Australia. She has toured Britain on the Africa Express train, stopping off around the country for concerts that included collaborations with Damon Albarn as well as Paul McCartney and John Paul Jones, who joined her backing band for the London finale. And she has continued acting as well, with British and European performances in Toni Morrison and Peter Sellars’ much-praised theatrical/musical re-working of the Shakespearian story of Desdemona, for which she wrote the music.

Now comes Beautiful Africa, an album of the powerful new songs, first heard in her Donke project, reminding listeners it was rock music that first inspired Traoré’s remarkable career. “I really like rock,” she said, “and it was because of rock that I wanted to play music.” When she was growing up, an older brother used to play her Dire Straits and Pink Floyd. “It wasn’t all I listened to—I discovered jazz and blues with my dad, and Malian and other African

Fri, Sep 26Royce Hall

8pm

RUNNING TIME: Approximately

90 minutes;No intermission

ON THE TERRACE: DJ set from KCRW’s

Tom Schnabel on the Royce terrace from 7:00-7:45pm

MEDIA SPONSOR:

CAP UCLA SPONSOR:Supported in part by the

Ginny Mancini Endowment for Vocal Performance.

CAP UCLA AND KCRW PRESENT

An evening with Rokia Traoré

MESSAGE FROM THE CENTER: It is not untoward or hyperbolic to apply the word magical to Malian music. Music is an integral part of the country’s culture, its societal structure, its entire way of life and way of being in the world. For an art form to play such an important role in the history and ethos of an entire nation is magical. And it follows that Mali is a country that has become known around the world for its extraordinary musicians.

The ancient griot tradition of Mali weilds storytelling roots that run deep and yet branch themselves across time and space, through generations and into hearts and minds of peoples of all race, creed and religion around the world.

The modern musicians who share the blues-based music of Mali share with us their certain magic. A soul-stirring, uplifting, and yes, even sometimes heart-wrenching magic.

In 2012, Islamic extremists overtook Northern Mali, imposing harsh Shariah Law that included an attempt to ban music. Mali’s artists refuse to be silenced. This art, so magical, so integral to the culture of Mali, will not slip away, thanks to of the bravery, the artistry, the purpose and intention of the people who continue to create and share it with us.

Tradition and exploration coalesce in Rokia Traoré, who we are utterly delighted to present tonight with her full band. Rokia, like so many artists from Mali, serves as a bridge between worlds, between the modern and the ancient, between memory and reverie. Rokia’s music speaks a magical language, deftly traversing themes of hope as well as sorrow and defiance.

This evening has taken shape differently than we originally intended. One of Mali’s most-revered artists and a man who is known as one of the greatest instrumentalists in the world, Toumani Diabaté was set to appear with his son Sidiki as they toured in support of their recent album of duets.

Unfortunately, just yesterday we were informed by Toumani’s management that they have experienced unexpected personal and logistical difficulties to start the tour. These factors, complicated by Toumani’s poor health, have resulted in their inability to come to the States. Everyone deeply regrets the circumstances that have lead to this outcome. We are working with the artist’s management to review the feasibility of rescheduling this tour.

We wish him the best. And we’re very grateful you are here tonight to help us welcome Rokia Traoré to Royce Hall for the first time.

Make no mistake, she is going to rock this place.

Mali’s most precious assets are its music and culture, its traditional faith and the bonds that bind its many different peoples. And its artists have an innate ability to create ties that bind between us all.

That part of tonight’s performance is unchanged.

Thank you for joining us.

music, and French chanson, but it was rock music that made me want to learn guitar.”

There are three guitarists on the album, including Traoré herself, but though the record is constructed around rock riffs and sturdy bass work, it still has a distinctively West African feel, thanks to rousing performances from Mamah Diabaté on the n’goni, the ancient, harsh-edged African lute. It’s an instrument that Traoré has used in compositions throughout her career, and she argues, “You can put it with everything. I’ve used n’goni in classical music projects, and it goes with blues, or jazz, or rock and roll. It’s a great instrument!”

Traoré’s changes of musical direction usually start with “a sound that I imagine…a sound inside my head.” She didn’t want to imitate what other people had done “because I need to do what I imagine—that’s the reason I’m making music.” But she needed someone to help her create the sound that she imagined, and eventually decided on John Parish, the writer, guitarist, and producer who has worked with Tracy Chapman, Eels, and PJ Harvey.

“I chose to work with John,” she says, “because when I listened to PJ Harvey or his other work, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I could imagine what the man who made this sound could do with me if we collaborated on my music. I was curious about it, but not sure about getting what I was imagining.” During the recordings, she said “he just asked me to listen to things and make my choice, and sometimes when I didn’t like or understand something, he changed it.” And was she happy with the results? “This is what I wanted to make and I’m happy. It’s even more than I imagined.”

Traoré, Parish, and Stefano Pilia play guitars on the album, with Nicolai Munch-Hansen on bass, percussion from Sebastian Rochford (Polar Bear), ‘human beatbox’ effects from Jason Singh, and n’goni playing and backing vocals by fellow Malian musicians Fatim Kouyaté and Bintou Soumounou, both members of the Foundation Passerelle that Traoré established in Bamako, the Malian capital, to help her fellow Malians prepare for careers in music and sustain the growth of Mali’s rich musical culture.. Traoré was awarded the inaugural Roskilde Festival World Music Award in 2009 for her work with the Foundation.

The songs are in the West African language of Bambara, as well as French and occasional bursts of English, and the often personal lyrics are concerned with Traoré’s thoughts on her own life, and on her tragically battered homeland.

Mali is a country that has become known around the world for its extraordinary musicians—from Traoré through to Amadou & Mariam, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté, Fatoumata Diawara, Tinariwen, Bassekou Kouyaté, Oumou Sangaré, Afel Bocoum, Salif Keita, among others—and was once a great tourist destination, famous for the desert cities and for the Niger river, as well as the celebrated Festival in The Desert. But over the past year it has slipped into political chaos, with the President overthrown in a military coup in the capital, and rebel groups taking over large sections of the north of the country. The rebels then splintered into different factions, with those initially fighting for independence in the north usurped by extremist Islamist groups, some linked to al-Qaeda, and who went on to ban music in the areas they controlled. Military forces from France, Mali, and other African nations have fought to repel these advances.

The album’s title track, built around the sturdiest rock riff on the album, is very much a love song to “battered, wounded Africa,” and reflects Traoré’s despair and fury at what has happened to her country, while commenting on problems elsewhere in Africa, from Ivory Coast to Congo. “The flood of my tears is in full spate, ardent is my pain,” she sings, while arguing that, “Conflict is no solution…Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight.”

Other songs on the album include the thoughtful ballad “Sarama,” a praise song to Malian women, partly sung in English, and the personal “Mélancolie,” a surprisingly upbeat song about loneliness and sadness that has already become a radio hit in France. Traoré says that she was lonely as a child, partly because her father was a diplomat and constantly on the move, and partly because she was the middle child in a family of seven.

Another, more upbeat song, “Sikey,” is also autobiographical, looking back at the criticism she received when she first set out to become a professional musician, and her determination to keep going. After all, she was not a griot, from a family of traditional musicians, but the daughter of a diplomat. And although she had no musical training, she gave up her studies in Brussels to return to Mali to create a new form of music, in which her songs would be backed by her acoustic guitar, along with n’goni and the xylophone-like balaba balafon, two instruments not normally played together in Africa.

Her breakthrough came when she was hailed as the ‘African Discovery’ of 1997 by Radio France Internationale after playing at the Angouleme Festival, in France, and since then she has continued to experiment and explore new ideas. In 2003, her album Bowmboï included a collaboration with Kronos Quartet and was awarded a prestigious BBC Radio 3 World Music Award. Her 2009 album Tchamantché reflected her new fascination with the Gretsch electric guitar, and won a Victoires de la Musique, the French equivalent of a Grammy, as well as a Songlines Artist of the Year Award for Traoré.

She has twice collaborated with the maverick director Peter Sellars, who in 2006 invited her to write and perform a work for his New Crowned Hope project, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birthday. Traoré replied by imagining Mozart as a griot in the time of the 13th-century African ruler Soundiata Keita, whose empire was centred in what is now Mali. She also recently collaborated with Nobel Prize–winning novelist Toni Morrison and Sellars on the theatre piece Desdemona, bringing an African dimension to the story of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine. The piece premiered in Vienna in the summer of 2011 and received its New York premiere at Lincoln Center that fall; its UK premiere was at the Barbican in London in the summer of 2012. The Guardian called it “a remarkable, challenging and bravely original new work.”

It was the experience of acting in Desdemona, she says, that led her to create the Damou (Dream) project, performed in London last year, in which she showed her skills as a storyteller, as well as a singer, with her version of stories from The Epic of Soundiata, dealing with events leading to the birth of Africa’s legendary ruler. These are stories that would traditionally be told by Mali’s griots—indeed, Traoré said she could only create the show because she has been learning from one of Mali’s finest female griots, the singer Bako Dagnon.

Rokia Traoré is indeed a remarkable artist, and it is difficult to think of anyone else who can switch from ancient Malian culture to acting and then to African rock and roll.

—By Robin Denselow

GUARDIANBaret Fink

CHAMPIONThe Feintech FamilyDr. Audree FowlerFariba GhaffariDeborah IrmasDiane KesslerRenee & Meyer LuskinGinny ManciniKathleen & John QuisenberryMaxine & Gene RosenfeldDr. Richard RossShirley & Ralph ShapiroDr. Allan Swartz & Roslyn Holt-SwartzDiane Levine & Robert WassRon WatsonMimi & Werner Wolfen

BENEFACTORAnonymousGail & James AndrewsBarry BakerDr. Peter & Helen BingMary Farrell & Stuart BloombergValerie & Brad CohenDr. Ellen Smith Graff & Fred CowanEliane Gans-OrgellJohn LiebesEdie & Robert ParkerJaclyn B. RosenbergAlan M. Schwartz Anne-Marie & Alex SpataruDeedee Dorskind & Bradley Tabach-BankPatty & Richard WilsonKaryn Orgell WynneMarcie & Howard Zelikow

PATRONAnonymousBarbara AbellDrs. Helen & Alexander AstinAnna Wong Barth & Donald BarthNadege & Jay CongerDr. Lee & Ann CooperBeth Rudin DeWoodyDr. Bruce & Barbara DobkinLaura DonnelleyNancy Berman & Alan BlochMary & Robert EstrinPatricia & William FlumenbaumDr. Irene Goldenberg

The boards of CAP UCLA and Design for Sharing would like to thank all the members who have made a choice to join them in supporting arts education and the art of performance at UCLA.

This listing represents memberships from July 1, 2013-September 1, 2014. If you have questions or would like further information on how you can support CAP UCLA please contact Yvonne Wehrmann at membership@cap.ucla.edu or (310) 794-4033.

Judy Abel & Eric GordonDr. Jerry Markovitz & Cameron JobeDr. Lewis & Sandra KanengiserThe Karsten FamilyJoseph KaufmanMilly & Robert KayyemJoanne KnopoffDr. Sheelagh Boyd & Larry LayneRonald Johnston & Joan LesserLeslie White & Al LimonSusan & Leonard NimoySarah & William OdenkirkClaude PetiteRonnie RubinSuzie & Michael ScottAbby SherCarolyn & Lester SteinCarol & Joseph SullivanDr. Elwin & Ann SvensonSue & Doug UpshawMichael Sopher & Debra VilinskyCarla Breitner & Gary Woolard

SUSTAINERAnonymous AnonymousRobert AndersonKathleen Flanagan & Keenan BehrleWendy-Sue Rosen & Thomas FreemanJacquelynn & Roland BeverlyDr. Thomas & Lily BrodRoberta ConroyHelene & Prof. Edwin CooperDr. Fereshteh & Khossrow DibaLinnea DuvallLinda & Stanley GoodmanLori & Robert GoodmanPattikay & Meyer GottliebAnn & William HarmsenLois HaytinLisa & Steven HiltonDaniel Lukas & Anne JarmainFiona & Michael KarlinTamara Turoff KeoughAliza & Michael LesserSusan LevichBea & Leonard MandelMargalit & Mel MarshallSandra Klein & Donald McCallum

Linda McDonough & Bradley RossJoanne & Gil SegelMuriel & Neil Sherman Laurie & Rick ShumanJennifer SimchowitzDonna Dees & Timothy TobinAlice & Norman TulchinWilliam TurnerStephanie Snyder & Michael WarrenJoan & Joe WertzBonnie & Paul YaegerDr. Albert & Marilouise Zager

PARTNERAnonymousDr. Yoshio & Natsuko AkiyamaLeslee Hackenson & Roger AllersSylvia & Joseph BalbonaRosanna BogartRonald & JoAnn BusuttilCity National BankOlga Garay & Kerry EnglishBillie & Steven FischerSherry & Matthew FrankCaryn Espo & David GoldJackie & Stan GottliebCarol & Irving GreinesLinda Essakow & Stephen GuntherDr. Robin Garrell & Dr. Kendall HoukMarti KoplinMorelle Lasky LevineBernard & Peggy LewakMerle & Gerald MeaserLeslie MitchnerPhylis NicolayevskyLynda & Stewart ResnickBernard “Bud” Heumann & Patricia RosenburgRita RothmanMartha Kaufman & Michael SkloffAndrea Weiss & Jerry WhitmanSamantha & John WilliamsJan & Steve WinstonArline Zuckerman

ADVOCATEAnonymousDiane & Noel ApplebaumSusann & Stephen Bauman

Dr. Scott Beasley & Digna BeasleyLinda Engel & Alan BenjaminBunny Wasser & Howard Bernstein Stephanie & Harold BronsonRene CruzStephen DavisDr. Glorya DixonLorenzo DoumaniSue & David EisnerDr. Paul & Patti EisenbergLinda & David EllisWilliam EscaleraSandra & Neil GafneyDeborah GluskerDavid GrayLinda & Jerry JangerKerry KorfHon. Sherrill LukeLaura & James MaslonLaurie McCrayPaulette & Ronald NessimAnne OsbergLinda PetersonNancy & Brad RosenbergCaron & Colin SapireJohn SchwartzAnne & Dan SimonMary Lou & William SteinmetzRobert SuiterRobert UhlNancy & Alan VoorheesHarold Williams

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