"I am griot," the man says in French-accented English. It is no small thing. He's part of an honored tradition, a caste of people in West Africa who throughout the ages have acted as the society's musicians, storytellers, historians and messengers.
He has a centuries-old griot (gree-oh) name to prove it: Baye Kouyaté (Bye Koo-ya-tay). He is a bandleader and world-class percussionist who specializes in the talking drum. And he is most certainly a storyteller.
It's hard to find a real griot in South Tampa. Although it's relatively common for Afrocentric American musicians to embrace the griot identity, it is not in their bloodline. As Baye says, he is "born griot."
Baye is making coffee in the home near Gandy Boulevard he shares with his girlfriend and manager Annette Saldaña and her two young sons. He wears baggy shorts and a Pink Floyd tour T-shirt over his lithe, 5-foot-10-inch frame. His skin is a deep, deep brown, like most of the people in his native Mali.
Baye has lived in the United States since 2004, but in many respects is still a Third World man. He is refreshingly free of the guile and irony that marks urban American behavior. There's not a smart-ass bone in his body. He is open and giving and — this is not said easily by an American with a penchant for irony — he radiates love.
Baye and his New York-based band will perform at the WMNF Tropical Heatwave this coming Saturday, not exactly a lucrative gig. He could certainly get away with playing his rhythmic Afro-fusion with a quartet, but Baye has paid to fly in four extra musicians for the show.
This from a man with little money. "It the first time we play in Tampa," he explains in charmingly fractured English. "We be open together, sharing together, make a happening."
There's a good chance a happening will happen. Baye's music is an intoxicating, often hypnotic, update of traditional Malian styles. The undulating grooves, which at times build to a measured ferocity, are driven by hand percussion and fortified by Western trap drums. Deep electric bass firms up the bedrock. Gentle melodies are propelled by intertwined African instruments: the kora, made of gourd and strings, which emits cascades of notes, and the balofon, played with padded mallets and sounding like a watery marimba. On certain songs, Baye sings folk lyrics in an airy voice.
It's his talking drum that adds the zest. A fixture in West Africa, the instrument, which comes in several sizes, has a wooden, hourglass body, goat-skin heads on each end and dozens of strings that stretch the length of the drum on the outside. The player positions it in the armpit and strikes the head with a curved stick and fingers. By squeezing the strings with his or her arm, a player can change the drum's pitch, giving it a swooping sound, making it talk. In the hands of a master like Baye, the talking drum produces a cauldron of polyrhythms laced with crude melodies. The sound is primal, elemental, exciting.
He has many admirers throughout the world, including his kora player, Yacouba Sissoko, a fellow Malian who's one of the more established musicians on the New York world-music scene. "In my country, we have many good talking drum playah," Sissoko says. "But among the younger generation he's a famous one. He plays the talking drum a little different from anyone in my country. He's created a new style that nobody can do."
Baye just finished his first CD, Danama, which was recorded in New York and financed by Annette. Leni Stern, a jazz and world guitarist of international repute, performs tasteful parts on several songs. She'll join him on stage at Heatwave. "I totally fell in love with playing with Baye," she says. "I'm part of the family. I think of him as my little cousin."
Despite his palpable humility, Baye has ambition. He wants the world to hear his music, and he knows that capturing the Western ear is essential. "I'm thinking about what I can do to get American people to get inside the music," Baye says. "It's Africa to America to Europe. It's a triangle of music."
A triangle whose longest line is African.
You may be wondering, as I did, how an authentic Malian griot ended up in Tampa Bay. It's a wonderful, and yet in many respects, typical saga, which Baye is happy to offer in great detail. Ask him how old he is and Baye answers, "Thirty-two. I was born in Bamako [Mali's capital], August 14, 1975."
Baye intersperses his personal biography with historical and cultural insights on his homeland. Mali, a former French colony and a democracy since 1992, is a large inland country, nearly twice the size of Texas. Most of the land lies in the Sahara, which makes it usually hot, dry and dusty. Although not born into privilege, Baye is exceptionally fortunate by Malian standards. The country's life expectancy is 49.5, its literacy rate 46 percent. He is the third of seven siblings, four of whom — two older and two younger — have already died from various maladies.
"We are poor country, the economy is not good, but we are rich in sharing, supporting each other," he says. Mali is also rich in music, having spawned such internationally renowned artists as Salif Keita, Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate.
While Baye is a member of the griot caste — a djely in his native Mandingo dialect — Mali's modern culture does not oblige him to become a musician/storyteller. From early in life, though, it seemed to be his fate. "When I was little, my mother [he pronounces it 'mahda'] was a singer," Baye says. "I would go with her to marriages and different ceremonies. I loved the talking drum."
While in his early teens, Baye began to accompany his mother, Gniagna Drame, and play at social functions with a talking drum borrowed from a friend. On a good day he might pick up $5 — not in tips, he stresses, but offerings to the griots. It's a ritual he still engages in. Baye keeps an apartment in Brooklyn, where he lives part of the year, and has performed at several Malian ceremonies in New York. "I used to ask him how much he was making to play a wedding," Annette says. "But there are no set fees, no contracts."
"You get what you get," Baye chimes in.
He tells of griots who've been handed jewels or the keys to a car. While Baye has never received anything remotely so lavish, he says, "If I need anything, I have people to help me. I have place to stay, food to eat. Always."
One morning in Bamako, when Baye was about 16, his mother had no meal to give him before school. So he skipped classes and went to the house of a nobleman, a rich uncle who was a lawyer. Baye came back with enough money to feed his family. "My mahda, she want to know how I get the money," he recalls. "When I tell her how I got it, that I didn't steal it, she was proud."
A djely asking for help from a noble is never considered begging.
Baye grew up in a huge 1-story house made of mud-brick that was bequeathed to his extended family by his father's sister. As many as 40 people — including cousins, friends, children of friends — inhabited the place. In addition to his griot activities and whatever schooling he could fit in, Baye took care of his father, Mamady, who suffered from Parkinson's disease for 17 years before dying in 1996.
Some days, the budding griot would start at work at 7 a.m. and continue into the night. During the early hours, he might provide drum accompaniment as a newly married couple announced themselves from home to home; after dark he'd play at the party with a band. On a fruitful day, Baye says, he'd make enough money to buy groceries — including a treat like chicken or good fish — and bring it back for a household feast.
There was tragedy, too. Baye's younger sister, Kadiatou, was about 7 years old when she went across town to stay with cousins for a few days. "I tell her before she leave, 'You are so beautiful. You are going to have a very beautiful husband," Baye recalls with a wistful smile.
A call came to the Kouyaté house that Kadiatou was sick, so Baye went to fetch her. "When I see her I start crying," he recounts. "Her eyes are swollen, she has a bad fever. I pick her up, and I can't find a cab or bus for 30 minutes. It's hot out. Tears run down my face.
"I finally get her back, and we try the traditional medicine [healer]. Then we take her to the hospital. I don't know what they do there. They put her in a cast," he says, his hands bracketing his upper torso. "They lay her in bed. Her neck and back get crooked. She gets out and she cannot walk. She limps around."
In 2005, Kadiatou fell ill again, returned to the hospital and died at age 17.
Baye laments the health care in his country. It is pretty much reserved for the rich. Medicine is available but very expensive. When the drummer returns home — he has not been able to since 2004 — he does not bring Yankees caps. "I [have gone] door to door to ask for medication to bring back to Mali," he says. "Diabetes, blood pressure, antibiotics. People give to me, then when I go back, I give to my friend who is a doctor. He gives the medicine to people who don't have money."
When Baye was 16, he caught the attention of a singer named Adja Soumouno, a successful traveling musician. Baye joined her on the road, performing in Mali and other West African countries such as Togo, Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal. They played for whatever they got and stayed with families along the way. He had become a professional griot.
In 1997, Toma Sidibe — a white French singer/guitarist with a penchant for African music — came to Bamako to record some music. Baye knew his kora player, and was quickly enlisted for the sessions. That led to Baye having a five-year stint in Sidibe's band, recording and touring throughout the world. Baye relocated to Paris but spent considerable time back in Mali.
"This guy come to me in Mali and say, 'I don't understand you,'" Baye recounts. "'I see a lot of people go Europe one time and when they come back they acting like someone who lives in France. Always when I see you, you the same, you didn't change. Why?'
"I tell him everyone thinks Africans who live in Europe and America have everything. But they work like animal, and they poor and miserable. I have to sacrifice in life to make this happen. The people, they watch too much TV. They think in America you walk in the street and you take the money and you become rich. I think when I go back to Mali, I need to show good example. I wear the traditional clothes. But the people, when you come back, they say 'I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this.'"
On Feb. 14, 2004, Baye flew from Paris to New York to visit a childhood friend from Mali. Soon after, Sidibe's manager called to tell Baye of an upcoming tour in Egypt. "I ask him, 'How much you gonna pay me?" Baye recalls. "The money was very small. I said, 'I cannot always touring with you if the money is like that. Now I want something more, and if you cannot pay me the money I ask, I cannot go.'"
Baye didn't go. Instead, he hung around New York, picking up menial jobs and meeting musicians in his inviting, guileless fashion. He taught himself bits of English on the fly.
Baye made a connection with the owners of Zebulon, a hip venue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. They offered him a gig. One problem: Baye didn't have a band. He had met the kora player Yacouba Sissoko, who was able to enlist a couple of other Malian musicians. The quartet took the stage on a weeknight, having never played together. No problem: As griots, they shared the common musical language of their homeland. Zebulon was crowded but not packed. "At the end of the night, it was clear that everyone enjoyed it," says Zebulon co-owner Jeff Soubiran. "We knew we'd have them back."
They christened their band Les Tougarakes (The Nomads).
Baye sits on the sofa next to Annette, an arm draped around her shoulder, the other hand absently twisting one of his short dreadlocks. She's Cuban-American and grew up in Atlanta. While visiting New York in 2006, she dropped into a Brooklyn nightclub and saw Baye playing in a pick-up drum ensemble along with a DJ. After they finished, she bought the drummers a round. That impressed Baye.
The two stayed in touch, and before long they were smitten. Annette and her boys spent last summer with Baye in his Brooklyn flat. When it was time to return to Tampa, it was only natural that Baye come along.
In due course, she took over the business of his career. "I feel a desperate need to promote his music," she says emphatically. "I can't fathom that people wouldn't hear him."
The family heads to Brooklyn in June, but Baye will be glad to return to Tampa in the fall. He has not found local musicians all that welcoming — Baye's asked to sit in a few times and been told no — but he doesn't seem bitter about it.
Overall, "I can be the only one black person in the place, and the people always talk with me; they don't look at me like I'm shit," he says. "I'm so happy here. It's relaxed, like in Africa. I see a lotta trees, lotta sun. And the temperature is good."
This article appears in May 14-20, 2008.