KOUYATÉ - NEERMAN

Balafon Maestro vs Electric Vibraphone Sorcerer
{Mali – France}
Bassline, Johannesburg 
Friday 11 October 2013

Photo Denis Rouvre

Remember Malian celebrated singer and guitarist Vieux Farka Touré, ‘Sahara Meets Indian Ocean’ accoustic vs electric collaboration featuring Guy Buttery & Alhousseini Anivolla, Niger’s tuareg desert blues band Etran Finatawa amongst others?!

The Bassline in partnership with the French Institute of South Africa and the Alliance Française of Johannesburg team up to bring another exceptional foreign musical act, Kouyaté-Neerman (Mali-France).

With their unique sonic landscape beyond African music, rock, jazz, electro, the Malian-French duo puts audiences in a hypnotic trance. Kouyaté-Neerman is more than the juxtaposition of two men, of two cultures. It is an instrumental dialogue in search of novelty, where the skyscrapers and the Mali’s steppes meet, refusing to be labeled.

When they began playing together eight years ago, they knew that their instruments were distant cousins. At the bottom of the vibraphone sounds a balafon, and vice versa. They know the past (the Mandinka tradition, the jazz), but they converse in present.

Kouyaté without Neerman is Lansiné Kouyaté who studied in the Orchestre National du Mali, partner of the greatest names (Salif Keita, Mory Kanté). Bold experimenter, he adapts his balafon’s ancient sounds to a variety of languages – from Béjart’s ballets to Joe Zawinul, including Positive Black Soul’s rap, Omar Sosa’s Cuban music, and the Malian project Red Earth from Dee Dee Bridgewater.

Neerman without Kouyaté is David Neerman who is comfortable as much in the evanescent world of the Korean singer Youn Sun Nah, as in the urban spontaneity of the slam (Anthony Joseph & the Spasm Band), in the contemporary post-jazz (the Collectif Slang) and in the thousand-year-old poetry of the Mandinka music.

They present their second album Skyscrapers & Deities, recorded last autumn in Paris. Skyscrapers inspire modernity, altitude and a panoramic point of view. Deities inspire ancestral magic, spirits, be they from the forest or the clouds. The album floats in between all these things, between the horizon and vertigo, technology and spiritualism. “With this record, we reached a new dimension”, says David Neerman, “Lansiné and I know and understand each other better. We do everything with joy, it’s getting easier and easier, we’re not afraid to let the music take us where it wants to take us”.

Watch their video Requiem pour un con on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CweWDyZubJg

Performance information
Friday 11 October at the Bassline, Newtown
Doors open at 20:00
Pre-sale tickets on www.webtickets.co.za: R70
Tickets at the Door: R80
Information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The performance is part of an African tour which will stop in South African and Lesotho as follow: Thursday 10 October | Alliance Française, Sunnyside, Pretoria Friday 11 October | Bassline, Newtown, Johannesburg Sunday 13 October | Rainbow Jazz Club, Pinetown, Durban Tuesday 15 October | Alliance Française, Maseru.

Find more about their music on www.myspace.com/kouyateneerman and www.facebook.com/kouyateneerman

Kouyaté – Neerman on tour in South Africa and Lesotho, in partnership with Institut Français, the French Institute of South Africa, the Délégation Générale des Alliances Françaises en Afrique Australe, the Alliance Française of Johannesburg, the Bassline, the Alliance Française of Pretoria, Pro Sounds, the Alliance Française of Durban, the Rainbow Jazz Club and the Alliance Française of Maseru.

www.ifas.org.za / www.facebook.com/institutfrancaisculture

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