Nahawa Doumbia - Kanawa '2021

Tracks list

This release marks 40 years of music-making for the singer. Recorded in Bamako
with a full traditional-pop ensemble. Album addresses immigration and war.
Follows on successful reissues of her early albums. Powerful musical
arrangements by longtime collaborator and guitarist NGou Bagayoko

Nahawa Doumbia’s new album Kanawa concisely captures this current moment
in Malian history. The singer, whose storied career spans more than four
decades, reflects on the immigration crisis from the Malian perspective in the
title of her new album Kanawa. Across eight songs recorded in Bamako with a band
including traditional and modern instruments, Doumbia merges her early work that
relied on a spare expression of her trademark didadi rhythm with the bombastic
range of contemporary Malian pop. The beautifully complex musical accompaniment
that results is courtesy of the large ensemble she pulled together with producer
and arranger (and day one collaborator) N’gou Bagayoko. The band features
two highly expressive Malian string instruments, the ngoni and the slightly
smaller kamalé ngoni, as well as a variety of percussion, drum programming,
karignan (a metal scraper) and acoustic and electric guitars. Doumbia’s
daughter, a celebrated singer with her own group and busy concert schedule,
Doussou Bagayoko sings on Adjorobena, a song about patience, tolerance and
living in peace. Doumbia weaves together a roadmap of her psyche when it
comes to the good and bad life has to offer. She talks about marriage and women
leaving home to join another through the metaphor of a tree in the garden; she
includes gunshot samples in the song “Foliwilen” to honor the
bravery of hunters, soldiers and other courageous people; she uses a bird in
“Djougoh” to talk about lazy people; and, in “Ndiagneko”
she advises people to ignore critics, just do you.

Mali has gone through an intense period of regional strife and terrorist
incidents over the last ten years and Doumbia roots the album in tragic local
concerns with deep global implications. “The meaning of Kanawa is so
simple. We see our children trying to cross the ocean all the time. I said that
many of our children die in the ocean and some of them die while crossing the
Sahara. But I ask them why do they leave their country? They said that they
leave because of the family situation or problems like poverty and unemployment.
I ask them to stay and work in their country. I call on the UN and African
leaders so that we can coordinate our efforts to find a solution, to create jobs
for them so that young people stop leaving. That’s why I chose it as the
title of my album so that everybody can learn from it and also so that there is
a reduction in the number of people emigrating. So that some will hear the
message and stay home and grow the land. Leaving is not the only
solution. My message is to help the youth find jobs.”



Tracklist:
1.01 - Nahawa Doumbia - Blonda Yirini (3:20) 
1.02 - Nahawa Doumbia - Didadi (6:35) 
1.03 - Nahawa Doumbia - Ndiagneko (4:42) 
1.04 - Nahawa Doumbia - Djougoh (3:30) 
1.05 - Nahawa Doumbia - Hine (5:32) 
1.06 - Nahawa Doumbia - Kanawa (4:27) 
1.07 - Nahawa Doumbia - Adjorobena (4:35) 
1.08 - Nahawa Doumbia - Foliwilen (7:09)

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