Corey Harris - Mississippi To Mali (2003)

> The album

Malissippi griot

Who would have guessed that behind Corey Harris nyahbinghi (1) rasta look, there is a university scholar ?!
Harris, who was born in 1969 in Denver, Colorado, got a linguistics diploma from the university of Maine in 1991, traveled to Cameroon where he spent a whole year studying African linguistics in the early 1990s. In Cameroon, he discovered African music, fascinated by its complex poly-rhythmic structure. After returning to the US, Harris taught English and French in Napoleonville, Louisiana, where he got more seriously into blues and gospel. In his spare time he played the clubs, coffeehouses and street corners of nearby New Orleans, then throughout the southern US. He was in Arkansas in 1994 when musician Larry Hoffman discovered him and produced his first album, "Between Midnight and Day" which was released the next year. Harris career was definitely launched in 1997 when his second recording with Hoffman, "Fish Ain't Bitin'", received the W.C. Handy Award for Best Acoustic Blues Album of the Year.

Later, in 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in music. The author of several books, he is currently doing a PhD in music, while teaching and working with university classes in Virginia in between concerts and tours.
Meanwhile, he traveled widely in West Africa and the Caribbean (particularly in Jamaica where he discovered and adopted rasta culture). There he befriended numerous musicians. In 2002, he collaborated with famous guitarist Ali Farka Toure from Mali.

The result in this album "Mississippi to Mali" fusing Mississippi and Louisiana blues and Toure's music. This 2002 voyage to West Africa was filmed by Martin Scorsese for his documentary film "Feel Like Going Home" (2) which traced the evolution of blues from West Africa to the southern US, and was released the same year as this album.
"Mississippi to Mali" is as fascinating as it is highly informative : Harris shows the connections that link West African traditional music to American blues without any unnecessary heavy demonstration but by simply going very naturally back and forth between the Delta and Africa. The simple juxtaposition of pure Delta blues songs and typical West African complaints makes the evidence luminous.

The Fife and Drums pieces from northern Mississippi (Shardé Thomas  ― 12-year-old at the time ―, Otha Andre Evans, Aubrey Turner, Rodney Evans & R.L. Boyce) on "Back Atcha" and "Station Blues" constitutes the ultimate link, to the point that after a while one hardly distinguish anymore between what's from Mississippi and what's from Mali ! 

The two opening tracks, "Coahoma" and "Big Road Blues", are 100% Delta blues but suddenly with Skip James' "Special Rider Blues" you're halfway between two continents : with Harris playing with his Malian friends, this blues sounds as African as American. The following song signed by Toure, "Tamalah", definitely transports us to Mali, before returning to a quite africanized Mississippi on the hypnotic Fife & Drums "Back Atcha".

◄"Otha" Turner & his Fife & Drums band

Back to Africa again with the traditional "Rokie" and "La Chanson Des Bozos" sung in French by Toure and Magassa, then return to vintage Mississippi blues with "Mr. Turner", a tribute from Harris to "Otha" Turner, the late master of the Fife & Drums style.
Then Skip James "Cypress Grove" is given a true African treatment, before a new return to the northern Mississippi Fife & Drums with a down-home version of "Sitting on Top of the World" titled here "Station Blues".

Ali Farka Touré et Toumani Diabate ►

If you don't look closely to the credits, you wouldn't know that the long hypnotic version of ".44 Blues"  is sung by… Ali Farka Toure.
"Njarka" is a 100% African affair with Toure on a 1-string kind of violin called njarka, simply backed by traditional percussion, while the following moving melancholy ballad, "Charlene", sung in a very "African" French by its composer (Harris) mixes sounds from both sides of the ocean.

Like a traveler returning back home after a long rich journey, the albums concludes like it opened, with two authentic Delta blues : Robert Petway's famous "Catfish Blues", though blended with African percussion, and finally, Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" in a true Delta slide style that shows Harris guitar solid skills.

This fascinating album is certainly building the best possible bridge between African music and Afro-American early blues, clearly showing the lineage linking the latter to West Africa. It's as much a cry of rebellion against slavery that cut many from their African roots, as a cry of hope : despite (and because of) slavery the cultural thread between the country of the blues and the mother continent has never been cut. Fortunately... ■

(1) Nyahbinghi is one of the very first structured rastafarian group that appeared in Jamaica in the mid-1930s. It was inspired by a secret animist cult from east-central Africa, centered around the legendary deity figure of a woman named Nyahbinghi who lived in the Rwanda-Uganda region in the second half of the 18th century. This secret cult, using ritual drumming during its trance ceremonies, probably began in Rwanda, around 1800. The Nyahbinghi initiates were violently fighting against European colonization and slavery. The Jamaican Nyahbinghi rastas, who are easily recognizable by the long colorful turbans tied over their dreadlocks, are similarly using ritual drumming in their spiritual ceremonies (along with a psychotropic plant better known there as ganja). 😉

Harris (left) & Toure in Mali (2002) ►

(2) The first chapter of Martin Scorsese documentary series "The Blues, A Musical Journey", "Feel Like Going Home", released on the PBS TV channel in 2003, follows Corey Harris in Mississippi and West Africa where he shows the Delta blues roots largely come from the traditional music of West Africa, particularly Mali and Niger.

The scholar

● Phone interview for an Australian radio station in Melbourne in 2016 (audio) : https://youtu.be/Yp03tIMPuQI

● CH gives a lecture, "Black Ourstory: Liberation Through Culture”, at the Double Shot Festival in Valencia in 2019 : https://youtu.be/3qG1ev8jI88

● Campaign for his book "Blues People" : http://www.tinyurl.com/bluespeoplebook

The Rastafarian
● CH talks of his rastafarian faith to the Priest Isaac's Institute of Holistic Knowledge, based in Antigua : https://youtu.be/hpAJZFzW9MA
● Covid confinement live stream interview on the web site "I-Jah Stars" in July 2020 (skip first 3 mn) : https://youtu.be/PuTgTpq97gU

Around the album "Mississippi To Mali"

● Corey Harris & Ali Farka Toure talking & playing "Catfish blues" (from Martin Scorsese's film "Feel Like Going Home") : https://youtu.be/uahUgXnhcUk

Ali Farka Toure & Boubacar Traore ►

● Corey Harris & Moh Kouyate play "Highway 61" from Fred McDowell, in 2012 : https://youtu.be/2_P74Cj7fjg
● Corey Harris & Baba Sissoko : https://youtu.be/2RvppT_XUgs
● Corey Harris, Alvin Youngblood Hart & Hook Herrera play ".44 Blues" in Madrid in 2019 : https://youtu.be/ZndfvA-dx2Y

Live shows videos

● The Corey Harris Band at Live Blues in 2018 : https://youtu.be/IVyejul4E_c
● The Corey Harris Band at the Festival International in Lafayette, Louisiana, in 2017 : https://youtu.be/wsu_8PQ6W7o & https://youtu.be/TRdQ50M0cg4
● Live in Villa San Giovanni (Italy) in Dec. 2017 : https://youtu.be/0JVJFejsGug

● At the Jerusalem Sacred Music Festival in Sept. 2015 : https://youtu.be/Wiw1vPAimVs
● The Corey Harris Band in Toronto in June 2015  : https://youtu.be/MXZe17ipYIs
● Corey Harris & Rasta Blues Explosion full set at the Front Porch Fest. in Stuart, Virginia, in 2014 : https://youtu.be/pMmmGT7lLaU
● The Corey Harris Band in 2014 : https://youtu.be/uWyX7UJtbLs
● Corey Harris streamed concert for the Ark Family Room Series : https://youtu.be/H9OoH55R1LE

Ali Farka Toure

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