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 It has been thrust into the world economy, while not having superseded the social conditions of a pre-invasion, feudal past.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.