Grammy-winning kora player Toumani Diabaté performed with Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt at The Turf Club, Mumbai on Wednesday, November 30. We were there.
Toumani Diabaté is a kora player whose father, Sidiki Diabaté, comes from a long line of kora players (71 generations to be precise). The kora is a unique instrument – it has 21 strings that are attached to a central neck, with a double bridge. It vaguely resembles a lute, but it’s played like a harp and sounds like a harp-guitar hybrid. Toumani Diabaté is a master of the kora. He has performed around the world and his fans include people like Damon Albarn and Bjork (with whom he performed at the 2007 Glastonbury festival). His 2005 album with Ali Farka Touré, In the Heart of the Moon, won Best Traditional World Album at the 48th Grammy Awards. It was incredibly disappointing then that at this, his first performance in India, he was given a sum total of ten minutes to perform solo.
The ICCR promoted event was held at the Turf Club in support of UNAIDS (Diabaté is a UNAIDS global ambassador). With chairs laid out in three distinct sections (VVIP, VIP and General seating; the latter being entirely empty), “esteemed guests” in the audience and felicitation gifts for the performers, this gig performance had all the trappings of a stereotypical government function. All that was missing was the lighting of a ceremonial lamp before the artists started.
The event started a full 90 minutes late with an opening act – the Indigo Flamenco Troupe; pimped by the MC for the evening as a folk-flamenco amalgam with an Indian flamenco guitarist (“Why go to Spain to hear flamenco, when you’ve got great flamenco musicians right here in India?” he pitched). This was the act’s debut live performance, a fact clearly evidenced by their performance of a brand of crowd-pleasing, big-flourish, flamenco-tabla fusion that was frequently sloppy and hugely underwhelming.
This 20-minute-long opening set was followed by a series of monologues by officials from the ICCR and the RWITC (Royal Western India Turf Club), whose poorly rehearsed and unnecessarily formal sales pitches for their respective agencies were tedious at best and kvlt at worst better (ref unintentionally hilarious RWITC video – we’ll put a link here as soon as its on the interwebz).
Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt took the stage after this spoken word interlude. He performed Raag Vachaspati accompanied by his son Salil Bhatt and a tabla player. It was already past 9pm by this time and with the curfew on live outdoor events being 10pm, the window that the Malian kora player had to perform was getting shorter and shorter. After an extended couple of compositions from the mohan veena player, Toumani Diabaté was introduced, finally.
The 10 minutes that Diabaté played the kora by himself was easily the highlight of the evening. He started by introducing the kora to the audience, talking about how it is played before delivering an intimate composition that traversed various world genres; a sound that was distinctly European with hints of Tinariwen-esque African soundscapes. The effortless delivery, Diabaté’s affable nature and the serene setting of the Mahalaxmi race course under the stars made for an almost spiritual awakening to what was otherwise a largely inanimate evening.
This solo episode was followed by a collaboration with Pt Vishwa Mohan Bhatt on a Rajasthani folk song called ‘Hichki’ and on ‘A Meeting By The River’, the title track of his Grammy-winning album. Clearly this collaboration was not well rehearsed as Panditji led the entirety of the performance, only creating forced interludes in the songs during which the audience had to make do with hurried jugalbandis that featured Diabaté’s virtuoso kora talent.
Promoters of a popular brand of chocolate were giving out free pieces of said chocolate at the exit. After what we’d just been through, I felt I’d earned a full bar.
Indiecision: C+
Photos by Naman Saraiya. Also, this happened.
Indigo Flamenco Troupe @ Turf Club, Mumbai
Pt. Vishwa Mohan Bhatt @ Turf Club, Mumbai
Toumani Diabaté @ Turf Club, Mumbai
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