Thir Ear Sofa Session with Doussou and Maria @ Soupanatural on Sep 9

Rehearsal at Ragnhildsgade on Sep 2nd

KonoKone Taxi Diary # 1

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www.konokone.net

KonoKone status september 2010

We are KonoKone: A coalition of female musicians from Denmark and Mali. KonoKone counts 21 active members who make music together across various borders: Geographical, cultural, technological and economical to name a few. Our home towns are: Aarhus, Bamako, Berlin, Biry, Copenhagen, Quebec, Reykjavik, Ry, Segou and Yanfolila. We deliberately chose ”coalition” over other fine words like: ”music collective” and ”band”. By choosing "coalition" as our format we hope to give out that - despite our differences - we are trying to work together. We don’t act as one single voice. Some of the KonoKone artists run their own recording studios while others don’t have electricity in their villages. Our life conditions are far from identical, so why should we pretend otherwise? Although we would like to contribute to a balancing of the distribution of wealth on a global scale, the immediate goal of KonoKone is not to even out our differences. Diversity is our point of departure. Instead we set out to work within our means - on a micro-scale - and get to work. More importantly, we have enough in common to make music together - and we do our best to make it a fair game for everyone despite our different outsets. In the Wassoulou folk music tradition (a region in the southern part of Mali) the kono singers take on a special social role within their communities which enables them to comment on social issues with some degree of immunity. In their songs they advice their listeners on important everyday life matters. This tradition is still alive. In the rural villages there is no shortage of female singers who sing for other women – about matters like fertility, education, marriage etc. According to the manager of Radio Wassoulou, Sidiki Sidibé, historically the women of the villages have sung together in order to scare off the animals at night thereby reducing their fear and loneliness when the men were out hunting. When one woman sang inside her hut, another woman sitting in another hut would respond. Recently the Kono singers have found a wider audience thanks to singers like Oumou Sangaré, Ramata Diakité and Nahawa Doumbia. Nowadays, many contemporary female Malian arists challenge the prevailing gender norms through their music. In various ways they trespass male domains within music. Some by playing instruments that women aren't supposed to play according to the traditional divisions of labour in music. Others through prolific business ventures. A few are outspoken (although strategically ambiguous) against matters like polygamy, adultery, and domestic violence. In subtle – yet noticable ways - these women make up for their limited power within their marriages as well as the political institutions by making their music political. In Europe women have better access to the formal political institutions and debate spheres. Also, they are legally protected against what we here understand as sexism. However, some would argue that there is a lot of discursive sexism going on. The Western ego-economy puts pressure on everyone to perform as admirable members of their respective identity category. Unlike Malian music, European music rarely offers itself as a site for public debate on "women's matters". Within the European tradition being explicit about issues like fertility and domestic violence is not considered very cool. Neither are pointed fingers. Instead song lyrics often hover around hardships on a more individual and less material level, romantic trouble being one of them. In Konokone we are not trying to meet halfway. We use translations of each other’s lyrics as a guiding line, but most of the time we sing in our own languages with our own words. We are working together on a distance - and we are trying to avoid that the good stuff gets lost in translation. We don't use lists of do’s and don’ts when it comes to working together. We team up in pairs in which some interpret each other’s music and words. Others produce around acapella vocals or write songs based on instrumental tracks to give some examples. Our name, KonoKone, is a combination of the words ”kono” (which means ”songbird” in malinké) and ”kone” (which means ”woman” or ”wife” in Danish). The overall idea is that the KonoKone artists collaborate on writing and recording songs as well as performing them together - contiuously. Our first EP will be released on September 3rd, 2010.

Læs mere: http://www.myspace.com/konokone