Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.This is proving a busy month for west African superstars-turned-part-time-politicians making surprising but welcome returns. Following hard on the heels of Youssou N’Dour comes Salif Keita, his Malian equivalent in stature. In 2019 the “Golden Voice of Africa” announced he was retiring from music to play draughts in the shade of his mango trees, which no one quite believed.Indeed, in 2023 he was lured to a festival in Kyoto where, in his hotel room, he recorded most of So Kono, Mandinka for “in the room”. Also present were Badie Tounkara, underpinning Keita’s acoustic guitar on ngoni, and Mamadou Koné salting the rhythm with the odd tap of calabash. On albums and in concert, Keita tended to imperial bombast. Occasionally, his live audiences would be treated to mesmeric acoustic guitar patterns and intimate vocals — and now, for the first time on record, this side of him can be properly heard.Most of the repertoire is old, but the songs come through clearly in their new arrangements. On 2009’s La Différence, “Gaffou” was sleek; here reborn as “Awa” (an African cognate of “Eve”), its praise of women is warm and insistent. The loping “Laban”, from 2005’s M’Bemba, is stripped of its comfortable reverb and tumbling majesty, its roots in desert blues more starkly exposed. From the same album, “Tu Vas Me Manquer” is similarly tentative: where the original’s faint Cuban swing assured the narrator that his love would not be lured away by the delights of Ouagadougou and Dakar, this reading sounds less convinced. The unloved album Talé, from 2012, yields a fresh re-recording of “Tassi”, a compassionate song about bereavement.The highlight, though, is new: “Kanté Manfila” pays tribute to Keita’s confrere in Les Ambassadeurs and on some of his later solo albums, who died in 2011. The song fades in abruptly, as if we are suddenly intruding on old friends sitting up late exchanging intricate musical patterns under the mango trees; when it takes its leave in similar fashion, it sounds as if the music will continue for ever.★★★★☆‘Salif Keita’ is released by No Format
