Bassekou Kouyaté and Ngoni Ba: Miri — a return to acoustic sound pays off

After years as a sideman — to Toumani Diabaté, Ali Farka Touré — Bassekou Kouyaté made his solo recording debut in 2007 with Segu Blue. Its songs highlighted his ngoni — a tiny traditional lute. “The ngoni”, he said at the time, “was the instrument of the griots. In the old days, it was made with a calabash and the skin from the head of a cow,” signals of high status. “My parents said: ‘Only people who had a head could listen to such an instrument.’ ” Three relatives backed him up on ngonis large and small for a vibrantly complex intermeshing of rhythms, and Kouyaté's wife Amy Sacko sang exuberantly over the top.

Subsequent albums never quite recaptured that early thrill, although Ba Power four years ago, an angry response to Mali’s political crisis, had a harsh, distorted fury. Now, with the new album, Kouyaté and Ngoni Ba have returned to the largely acoustic sound of the first. Miri is studded with guest appearances, which is often the sign of a world music artist running low on inspiration. But in this case their effect is subtle. Michael League of Snarky Puppy adds some guitar to an already-driving “Konya”; Casey Driessen’s fiddle on “Nyame” is not too far from traditional Manding fiddling.

Yasel González Rivera from reggaeton act Madera Limpia sings the responses on “Wele Cuba”, a rolling groove that celebrates the Malian (indeed, west African) love of Cuban music. Kouyaté is reunited with Habib Koité on “Kanto Kelena” (they toured Europe as a trio with Toumani Diabaté in the 1980s): Koité sings with husky-voiced regret about a woman who has left the narrator, guitar and ngoni shiver together in melancholy and the backing vocals offer consolation.

There are meditations on the state of the nation: the title track is an instrumental lament for a broken country. The story of the autocratic Bamana king Bina on “Fanga” has contemporary resonance; “Tabital Pulaaku” laments the increasing animosity between herders and farmers caused by climate change. Throughout the album, Kouyaté’s ngoni twists and turns, packing notes together with the density of a dark star, circling obsessively and then racing.

★★★★☆

‘Miri’ is released by Out Here