Bamako Sounds: The Afropolitan Ethics of Malian Music


Drawing on years of ethnographic research with classically trained players of the kora (a twenty-one-string West African harp) as well as more contemporary, hip-hop influenced musicians and producers, Ryan Thomas Skinner analyzes how Bamako artists balance social imperatives with personal interests and global imaginations. Whether performed live on stage, broadcast on the radio, or shared over the Internet, music is a privileged mode of expression that suffuses Bamako’s urban soundscape. It animates professional projects, communicates cultural values, pronounces public piety, resounds in the marketplace, and quite literally performs the nation. Music, the artists who make it, and the audiences who interpret it thus represent a crucial means of articulating and disseminating the ethics and aesthetics of a varied and vital Afropolitanism, in Bamako and beyond.  

Ryan Thomas Skinner is Associate Professor of Music and African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He is the author and illustrator of a children’s book, Sidikiba’s Kora Lesson, and an accomplished kora player. 

CONTACT RYAN SKINNER:

email | skinner.176@osu.edu
phone | 614-292-9441

    Download the Introduction in PDF format

    Read the Satellite Magazine interview

    and the blog post, What is "Malian music?"

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