Malian composer, Diabate, picking the strings of the kora

 Malian Jazz composer Diabate [Photo: Courtesy]

The renowned Malian composer-instrumentalist, Toumani Diabate, picking the strings of the kora. A creative mind conjures up images and phrases derived from inspired sources to create an artistically beautiful piece of work.

 In jazz music, for instance, the artistic spirit in the composer and performer is essentially let free to absorb all forms of inspirations one needs to produce a creative piece of work.

Interestingly, some of the most celebrated jazz music we listen to today is a crossbreed of the various musical idioms derived from various parts of the world.

In any case, jazz is essentially improvisational music. And, by the way, jazz improvisation – these days – is no longer restricted to the trumpet, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, or the piano as was the case some decades ago.

 In jazz bands, for instance, until the mid-1930s, the guitar was played as a strictly rhythm instrument, until the coming of the young "renegade" African-American guitarist, Charlie Christian, who was arguably the first guitar player to solo on a jazz record!

Since the turn of the 20th Century, when jazz begun in the United States of America, this music style has metamorphosed severally and has spread even beyond the country's boundaries.

Significantly, jazz is no longer an exclusive Western world art form but rather a global artistic phenomenon.

 If anything, the achievements that we are witnessing and celebrating in jazz music as we know it today were derived through diversity of aesthetic cultures — even in the United States itself.

Good music knows no boundaries; it doesn't recognize a narrow attitude from its listener or critic. Ideally, a composer or performer of good jazz music is one who is not intrinsically obsessed about being a purist.

Instead, the true jazz artist is one who is wide-eared and open to change. Many Latin American and European countries, a couple in Asia, and maybe a lesser number in Africa have already made progress towards achieving a noteworthy understanding and appreciation of jazz music.

 But jazz music, just like any other art-form that thrives on poly-stylistics, is continuously being reshaped by and, therefore, benefitting from the steady rise of new talents, including some from the erstwhile perceived to be the so-called "non-jazzy" countries, mostly in the Eastern Europe sub-continent and Asia, save for Japan, who are daring to even introduce their own "local" feel to the jazz idiom.

Nonetheless, interestingly though, the music that is being created and released by artists from the so-called "non-jazzy" countries, using "non-conventional" instruments, has pushed the sonic abilities of the "native instruments" beyond the limits of certain modern instruments.

Every instrument, regardless of its origin, has a tonality. In the instance of most music listeners from the "first-world," they had not heard music played from some of the instruments from the "other-world." Luckily, we are now living in a world that has variously been empowered and inspired by technological innovations of many kinds.

Access to affordable modern technology, therefore, has enabled aspiring musicians — both in the developed and developing countries— to easily access both music education and both music instruments and equipment.

You see, modern technology is continuously lowering barriers that just a couple of years back had hindered budding musicians from accessing the vital knowledge they required to be able to understand the various insights one ought to possess to be able to perform jazz music, which is a very demanding art form.

This now, brings us to the aspect of access and usage of modern technology. As had been stated earlier in this article, many a budding artists have embraced tools of modern technology in their works.

 In fact, some technology giants in the developed world have adapted what is perceived in their countries to be "unique" musical sounds from the "native instruments" of the "other world" by incorporating them into the sound-boxes of modern keyboards and synthesizers.

Leading Western manufacturers of musical instruments such as Roland, Fender, and Yamaha, among others, have all incorporated sounds derived from instruments whose origins are in Africa. There's the Kenyan nyatiti: an eight-stringed, round hollow-bodied instrument).

Also, there's the marimba or kalimba (xylophone), which is made from bamboo and which is common in many parts of Africa. There's the kora, a West African (mostly The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bisau, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mali) 21-stringed instrument made from a large calabash cut in half and covered with cow skin and attached to a neck made from hard wood.

 India, on the other hand, is among leading Asian countries to stick to its authentic instruments that include the tabla, a small drum, and the sitar, an instrument similar to the kora; and assorted other instruments, including a variety of flutes.

There are several African musicians, for instance, who have teamed-up with Western jazz musicians, or who lead their own jazz bands, to record their original songs to world-wide acclaim.

They include Ethiopia's multi-instrumentalist Mulatu Astatke, who has recorded numerous albums playing the marimba; Kenya's renowned nyatiti player and percussionist Ayub Ogada (at the Tudor Boys Secondary School, Mombasa, we called him Job Seda); Mali's kora players Moussa Kouyate and Toumani Diabate; Guinea's Sekou Kouyate and Djeli Moussa Diawara; and The Gambia's Lamin Kuyateh and Foday Mousa Suso, among many others.

India's late Ravi Shankar (born Rabindra Shankar Chowdhry) was world-renowned sitar player and composer. (Shankar is the father of the American jazz pianist and singer-songwriter Norah Jones from a relationship that he had with an American concert producer, Sue Jones.) His eldest daughter, Anoushka, is a respected sitarist.

Shankar worked alongside some of jazz's foremost performers, who include British jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, and The Beatles guitarist George Harrison.

In the conventional instrument-playing musicians, Africa has, for instance, produced jazz heroes in the likes of Cameroon's saxophonist-vocalist Manu Dibango and bassist-vocalist Richard Bona; Nigeria's late pianist-saxophonist-vocalist Fela Ransome Kuti; D.R. Congo's vocalist-pianist-guitarist Lokua Kanza; South Africa's late guitarist Allen Kwela, pianist Abdullah Ibrahim (formerly Dollar Brand), trombonist Jonas Gwangwa, trumpeter-vocalist Hugh Masekela.

Latin America, on the other hand, has more native and modern instrument-playing jazz musicians than the combined African and Asia continents.

 In that region, Brazil has a huge and impressive collection of artists who have recorded extensively.

They include saxophonist-composer-arranger Moacir Santos, pianist Manfredo Fest, the late guitarist-vocalist Joao Gilberto, the late guitarist-vocalist-pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim, the late guitarist Laurindo Almeida, multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, saxophonist Victor Assis, pianists Tania Maria, Lalo Schifrin and Sergio Mendes, trumpeter Claudio Roditi, guitarist Toninho Horta, and bassist Bebeto, among many more.

There's no doubt that these artists are some of the developing world's finest jazz artists who have had commendable achievements that jazz fans all over the world are already celebrating.

Indeed, in some of the young up-coming talents, there are some potential tomorrow's superstars. And lest you forget, jazz is a pliable tradition that is ever evolving.