Salif Keita

Salif Keita is one of a handful of African musicians who has won acceptance
by Western mass audiences. To his credit, he has diluted neither his
message nor his distinctive Malian style in order to make this
breakthrough. Such was the impression I was left with after hearing him
perform at NYC's Beacon theater last night (2/22/99).

Keita hails from Bamako, Mali's capital city, which is as important to the
great flowering of African music over the past several decades as New
Orleans or Chicago were to American Jazz in the early years. Malian
musicians sing in one or another of the languages traceable to the
Mandingan empire in Western Mali of the 13th to 15th century founded by
Sunjata Keita, a renowned warrior, who is an African version of the proud
Aztec or Incan dynasts of the same time period. As a scion of this noble
family, it is a matter of pride that Keita sings in the Maninka dialect,
making no concessions to English as other musicians do.

When Keita first appeared in Bamako night clubs, he made a striking
appearance, starting with the fact that he was albino. He dared the
audience not only to accept him despite his lack of skin pigmentation, but
also on the basis of clinging to Manding tradition. Wearing a undyed cotton
tunic sewn with amulets, a typical hunting garb of the Manding empire, he
sung about literacy and uplifting Mali's poor. This combination of
tradition and modernity reflects Mali's contradictory society. It has been
thrust into the world economy, while not having superseded the social
conditions of a pre-invasion, feudal past.

Keita sings in a medium tempo, with a penetrating high tenor voice rooted
in the Islamic style of the muzzeins, who call people to prayer each
morning. Each song is structured as a series of observations about love,
longing or the struggle to survive in Malian society. In "Lony," he defends
tradition:

"The world is what it is
It benefits to those who know
Thus goes the world

"A family's merit depends on its chiefs
One settles into this family because of its chief
A village's reputation depends on its chief
One settles there out of admiration for the chief
The chief for whom we all exist.
This great chief for whom the whole world lives
Must be of infinite goodness..."

Keita is a "jali," a court musician. At the top of Malian society are the
aristocrats who claim direct lineage to Sunjata Keita. Beneath them on the
social ladder are the casted professions (nyamakala), which includes
musicians and blacksmiths. Caste members are expected to marry within the
caste. Jalis play the role of social commentators in Malian society. With
their gift of speech, they have also served as "go betweens," arranging
marriages or arbitrating disputes.

While capitalist property relations tend to erode such traditional social
relationships, they have never disappeared. Instead Malian society creates
its own version of "combined and uneven development" as the popular singer
invokes traditions of 500 years ago, while playing electrified instruments.
Keita, in particular, has been very adept at integrating all sorts of
strands of contemporary popular music into the underlying Malian style.

When Keita became a "jali," he actually made a conscious decision to enter
a lower caste, since both parents were Keitas, descendants of Sunjata.
Explaining his decision, he said, "My family opposed me, but isn't it true
that the evolution of civilization is marked all the time by revolution? It
was necessary to mark another century that wasn't the century of the
ancestors. So that's why I decided to sing despite the position of my family."

In "Waraya," Keita addresses the citizens of Mali, Ivory Coast and Burkina
Faso with his vision of pan-African liberation:

"We have thought, mother,
About the future without knowing
It is the dawn of democracy
Let no one hinder its ascension
It has just been born
It must grow
Let us forget all our petty selfishness."

Marxism has tended to be impatient with precapitalist social formations,
which exist to a greater degree in Africa than anywhere else. Approaching
the complex reality of Malian society requires a much more subtle approach
than calling for proletarian revolution untempered by local conditions.
Perhaps the failure of Marxist parties to sink roots in sub-Saharan Africa
is a symptom of its failure to fully theorize the role of capitalism in
"peripheral" societies. This has led some, like Andre G. Frank, to wash his
hands of the Marxist project.

I believe that Marxism can remain relevant, but only by becoming relevant
to the lives of people at the periphery. Rather than demanding that West
Africans join the proletariat and give up traditional beliefs overnight,
Marxism should consider the example of Marx himself who urged the Russian
revolutionary movement to do everything it could to protect the rural
communes from being integrated into the capitalist system.

It is not surprising that CLR James had similar insights into African
society in 1947, as reflected in his article "To the People of the Gold
Coast." He explains why the tribe, despite its origins as a precapitalist
social organization, remained relevant to trade union and socialist
struggles in Africa:

"The sense of unity and common social purpose which for centuries has been
imbued into the African by the family and the tribe is not lost in the
city. In the older European countries the towns centuries ago created new
forms and of social unity in the artisan guilds. Later, large-scale
capitalist production recreated another form of unity in the labour process
itself, which finally produced the unions and labour organisations of
today. Yet in the United States, as late as 1935, one of the most powerful
constituents of the meteoric rise of the CIO was the fact that scores upon
scores of thousands of Southern workers on the basis of the discipline
imposed upon them by large-scale production, brought a devotion which was
rooted in their close sense of bewilderment in the big city, from which the
union was a refuge. The urbanised Africans found neither guild nor
large-scale union to organise them. They created their own forms of social
unification and they used what came naturally as a basis, the tribe.

"On a tribal basis they formed unions and associations of all kinds, mutual
benefit associations, religious groupings, literary associations, a vast
number of sports clubs, semi-political associations or associations which
provide in one way or another for one or some or all of these activities.
Sometimes, although some of the members are well educated, they conduct
their business in the native language. They maintain close communication
with their tribal organisation or village. They raise money and initiate
schemes for education and social welfare in the village or tribe. The
tribal bond unites both the literate and illiterate members of the town.
They often act politically as a unity. Nevertheless these are not tribal
organisations in the old sense. They are fundamentally a response to the
challenge and the perils of town life in a modern community."

And this too would describe Salif Keita's music: a response to the
challenge and the perils of town life in a modern community.


Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)