Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

The amazing singer Salif Keita from Mali is currently on a world tour and will perform live in Vancouver Saturday, April 2.
The man nicknamed "Africa's Golden Voice" will be performing with a 13-piece ensemble and the local marimba band Kutapira will have the honour to perform as the opening band for him.

For more than forty years Salif Keita has been the goldsmith of modern Malian music, tirelessly pursuing his craft by extending musical frontiers in a constant quest for new ways to make records; and his own music has multiplied its overtures to the world around him.

In the course of his travels--and encounters--Salif Keita never put aside his Mande roots and culture. Today he beautifully brings the decade to a close with his new album, La Différence, the third chapter of his acoustic trilogy. This album is not only one of the most moving of his career, but also one of his most politically committed.

Salif Keita has stayed on the edge where musical evolution is concerned, and his new album, the jewel in a crown of sumptuous arrangements, proves it, together with a crew of loyal musicians both new and old who surround Salif in closed ranks. His voice makes him capable of interpreting true emotions, whether singing in Malinka, Bambara or French.

Born an albino, Salif Keita had a clear skin-colour that was an ill omen in the ancestral Mali where he grew into a man. "I'm a black man, my skin is white and I like it, it's my difference / I'm a white man, my blood is black, I love that, it's the difference that's pretty", he sings in La différence, the title-track from his album and its first single. He says it all in this hymn to tolerance, a song in which he expresses his artistic convictions as he has rarely done before.

OPENING FOR SALIF is Vancouver's KUTAPIRA; this high-energy talented group is forging new links between the traditions of Zimbabwe's marimba music and the rhythmic soul of Afro Cuban drumming. Kai Buchan, Jeremy Bryant, Sangito Bigelow, Chris Couto and Theo Vincent are all fluent in both disciplines; rotating through their battery of soprano, tenor and baritone marimbas and trading licks on the drum kit, timbales and hand drums.