Reprinted from FFWD weekly, by John Reid.
Read it in the August 16, 2001 Issue, in the music section.

Alpha is the Omega
Guinean-born Alpha Yaya Diallo brings the world to Canadian music

While it is not yet widely recognized, we have several significant world music artists living right here in Canada – among them is guitarist, composer and singer Alpha Yaya Diallo.

Based in Vancouver, Diallo is an expatriate of the coastal West African country of Guinea. Once a member of Fatala, a group of West African musicians recording for Peter Gabriel's Real World label, he decided to stay in North America following the group's 1991 tour. Eight years later, Diallo's CD The Message won the 1999 Juno award for Best Global Music recording. His latest album, The Journey, is slated for a September release, and there is also a film documentary, The Best of Both Worlds, shot in Guinea and Canada during the recording of the album, that is due to be broadcast this year on Bravo!, and on CBC TV in both English and French.

To fully understand the context in which Diallo's music has emerged, it is perhaps instructive to examine the political climate in which it originally developed. After Guinea's independence in 1958, President Sékou Touré cut the country off from the West, preferring "independence in poverty to riches in slavery." He initiated a cultural revolution, which put a strong emphasis on the rediscovery and rehabilitation of Guinea's music, arts and dance. According to Chris Stapleton and Chris May, in their book African All-Stars: The Pop Music of a Continent, prior to independence an open-door policy had attracted an influx of music from France and North and Latin America. Guinean musicians played waltzes, foxtrots and Latin dance music, but Touré's administration disbanded a plethora of dance orchestras and vocal groups and asked performers to return to authentic African rhythms and tunes.

"Touré was trying to control the music," says Diallo. "We will always play traditional music, (but) we all are not going to play the same just to be Guinean musicians playing traditional music. For me it was controlling the culture. He didn't do it to help the people, he did it to control.... He was telling musicians how to play, but he wasn't a musician. That was the problem in Guinea."

Traditional Guinean music plays a big part in Diallo's music. Everyone in Guinea studies traditional music, but Diallo took it one step further and travelled around the country learning different styles of music from its four provinces. He started off playing percussion (on djembe and such), then at age 12 he traded that in for guitar. Later, he played balafon (an indigenous wooden xylophone), but guitar was a rare instrument and in high demand, so he continued to be drawn to it. Diallo says that old records of George Benson and James Brown were most influential in developing his sound.

"The point was to learn different styles," says Diallo. In his present group, the Afro-funk aggregation called Bafing, Diallo uses traditional Guinean instrumentation in addition to guitar, bass and our Western drum set. A longtime associate, Prince Diabate, plays the kora, a large harp-lute played traditionally by jalis or griots and now incorporated into electric music by such artists as Mory Kante.

The traditional percussion instruments in Diallo's ensemble include the djembe and a small, loud Senegalese drum called the mbalax, and the group incorporates dancing into its stage show.

The music is influenced by Mandinke, the dominant music of Guinea's Malinke people, and Cape Verdean rhythms Diallo picked up in his trips to Senegal.

"It helped me a lot to develop the mix of Mandinke with the guitar style I am doing. I was a hungry little boy trying to learn different rhythms, different styles. So I did travel a little bit around West Africa to learn.

"The funk is an evolution of Afro-pop. Since Peter Gabriel and some big stars got interested, that is where the name Afro-funk came from – just to give a description to the African music internationally."

With his beautiful and sophisticated music, Diallo is a purveyor of West African heritage, but also makes use of the latest advances in technology to appeal equally to the head, the heart and the feet.