Praise for Rokia Traoré’s Tchamantché:

“Truly mesmerizing.”

“It’s an album you’ll want to maintain in a prominent place among your collection.”

“…Her best and most daring work.”

“[Tchamantché] confirms Traoré’s reputation as of Africa’s most sublime artist.”

“Traoré’s a singer-songwriter in the modern sense who embraces but also stretches

centuries-old traditions.”

“…the first great record of 2009…a vivid set of West African folk songs performed with

haunting beauty and penetrating passion.”

“[Traoré] has a voice that is dramatic and entrancing—and yet that’s only part of what makes

her fourth release, Tchamantché, so compelling. The album’s real allure is its blend of traditional and contemporary elements...”

“Africa’s answer to Joni Mitchell.”

“…on her fourth and best album, Tchamantché…her music carries the plucked modal patterns of

Malian tradition toward contemplation and intimacy.”

“…gorgeous musicality and graceful simplicity…”

“…entrancing and beautiful…”

“Some albums are extraordinary because they capture their time. Others are great because they transcend it. Malian performer Rokia Traoré’s arresting new Tchamantché is one of the latter.”

“The most exciting female African musician emerging on the international stage is Mali’s Rokia Traoré.”

« An old guitar, a new muse - Malian singer finds inspiration in a rockabilly twang »

Live Last Night: Rokia Traoré - Patrick Foster – February 13, 2009

"I can't say what style I am," Rokia Traoré explains in a press release for last year's "Tchamantché," an album that finds the Mali singer/ songwriter weaving slippery West African grooves into blues structures on top of mournful, meditative laments. But at the Barns of Wolf Trap on Thursday night, the pacing and feel of her explosive performance had much in common with a no-holds barred rock concert.

The daughter of a Malian diplomat, Traoré has lived all over the world and spent time at university in Brussels -- an unusual path to world music limelight. Her recordings (four albums over a 12-year span) reflect that individuality: an unusual approach incorporating vocal harmonies, lyrics in French or Bambara (one of many Malian languages) and her own guitar playing added to traditional African sounds.

An amplified n'goni (a Malian lute) and thumb piano were the only traditional instruments evident Thursday and both were used in a driving style alongside drums, electric guitar and bass to form a propulsive attack that relented only occasionally over two hours.

Traoré's version of "The Man I Love" was a Billie Holiday love letter and "Dounia" was the night's somber moment, a pensive ballad driven by her own electric guitar. Beyond that, however, everything surged and roiled over a wicked tangle of electric guitar and n'goni. "Aimer" and "Tounka," which recalled the propulsive style of recent Amadou and Miriam performances, built to furious climaxes, concluding with Traoré dancing in joyous release.

While her African roots remain strong, interludes in which she introduced her talented band (and had each member take a solo) and a furious, nearly 20-minute encore jam confirmed Traoré is becoming adept at harnessing the power of rock-and-roll.

Rokia Traore is riveting at Old Town By Joshua Klein | Special to the Tribune - February 10, 2009

Rokia Traore typically sings in her native Bamana, and sometimes in French. But 45 minutes into her sold-out show at the Old Town School of Folk Music Sunday, the Malian artist switched to English for a breathtaking version of Billie Holiday's (by way of Gershwin) "The Man I Love," a rendition that reduced the already riveted audience to a reverential silence. Any other artist might have played that song as a sort of trump card, but in Traore's case the detour represented just another facet of a fascinatingly complex singer. The daughter of a diplomat, Traore pursued music not as a griot (who recounts oral history) following in the family footsteps but by choice. She's proud of her African heritage, but she's also willing to pick up a guitar and explore melodies and harmonies relatively foreign to her homeland. Traore's a singer-songwriter in the modern sense who embraces but also stretches centuries-old traditions. She also clearly enjoys what she does. While Traore frequently operates in a deceptively hushed mode, she proved herself a secret dynamo, driving her five-piece band (including the usual bass, drums, backing vocals and guitar, but also a kind of African lute) to greater heights with her enthusiastic dancing and occasional out-of-character shouts. She strapped on a beautiful Gretsch guitar for the haunting "Dounia" (from her new album "Tchamantche"), but also revealed her fiery political side with "Tounka," a song decrying the Immigration of African youth to Europe and America. And having marveled at the audience's ability to "dance in their seats," she forced everyone to stand and move to an epic encore that featured shout-outs to Nigerian Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti, fellow Malian Saleif Keita and even a nod to KC and the Sunshine Band's "That's the Way (I Like It)." That encore stretched into a near 30-minute showcase of movement and musicianship, replete with traded solos, with the whole band congealing into one sweaty, smiling, interlocking rhythm section. It couldn't have been more different from the subdued and soulful Holiday cover, but in both cases the incredible Traore was in command of stage, song and crowd alike.

A Malian Chanteuse With Modern Grace By Banning Eyre

All Things Considered, February 3, 2009 - Malian singer Rokia Traore has never been a traditionalist. The daughter of a diplomat, she grew up assimilating European and African cultures, and in her 10-year career, she's developed a sound that uses elements of Malian tradition in her own way. Traore's fourth album, Tchamantche, is just out, and it's her best and most daring work.

"Dounia," the opening track, tells the whole story. Traore always stood out as a West African female singer who also plays guitar.

Here, she trades in her usual acoustic axe for a vintage Gretsch jazz guitar and matches its dark tones with a moody, whispering melody.

In "Dounia" — meaning "the world" — Traore touches on the themes of Mali's traditional praise singers, who belt out mighty proclamations about life's inevitable course. "No one can see, [even from the highest point of existence] what tomorrow will be," she sings. "Days that are honey sweet? Days that taste of gall? ... Hours of glory, hours of disappointment." But her mode is less assured than the griots, more delicate and mysterious. With this introspective mood established, Traore's ensemble joins in, led by a traditional lute.

Traore's meld of African and rock aesthetics is understated and as comfortable as it is cool. In this one song, her vocal style shifts from an opening whisper to bird-like cooing and ultimately a growling crescendo in which she laments the remoteness of the heroes who built the great societies of the past — as she puts it, "the story of an Africa we miss." It's the work of a mature artist who embraces the contradictions of her African ancestry and looks ahead with hope, but also a poet's wariness.

So begins Tchamantche, which means "balance." The world's less-developed societies have produced many singers who seek to balance musical style and cultural perspective, and to address the larger world. Few manage it with the grace and style of Rokia Traore.

Music Review: Traore's 'Tchamantche' shows genius AIMEE MAUDE SIMS, Associated Press Writer Aimee Maude Sims, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 13, 7:37 am ET

Rokia Traore, "Tchamantche" (Nonesuch Records)

"Tchamantche" is a quiet, subdued album whose genius lies in each song's arrangement, the combination of modern and traditional elements and the intensity of Rokia Traore's voice. Part griot and part chanteuse, Traore's voice trembles and whispers among a sparse rhythm section and traditional African instruments on the well-crafted tracks.

A circuitous guitar riff, the pluckings of a West African lute called an n'goni, brushes on a snare drum: They all gently meld into atmospheric grooves. "Tchamantche" is Traore's long-awaited follow up to "Bowmboi," released in 2003, on which the Malian

artist again showed a deft touch for arranging when she collaborated with the American string ensemble The Kronos Quartet.

All the tracks on "Tchamantche" (which means, approximately, "balance") are originals except the Gershwin classic, "The Man I Love," which is a treat to hear her sing in heavily accented English. Traore's lyrics, sung mostly in Bambara and French, draw on the beauty of nature and contain aphorisms about the value of human existence and the fragility of love. "We arrive in this world somewhere between the past and the future/And we evolve by wavering between more and less," Traore, the daughter of a Malian diplomat, sings on the title track.

"Tchamantche's" mix of tender and danceable tunes, and African and Western musical sensibilities create a delicate balance. It's an album you'll want to maintain in a prominent place among your music collection.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: Listen for the Bobby McFerrin-like human beat-boxing at the climax of the subtly funky "Aimer."

By THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: January 11, 2009

CRITICS’ CHOICE – New CDs

ROKIA TRAORE - “Tchamantché” - (Nonesuch)

In its traditional roles as historical chronicle and community conscience, West African music doesn’t favor introspection. That’s what makes the Malian songwriter and singer Rokia Traoré such a graceful exception. Not a member of a musical dynasty like the many musicians named Diabaté and Kouyaté, with no family tradition to uphold, Ms. Traoré is a well-traveled diplomat’s daughter who is creating her own radically delicate fusions.

She almost always sings quietly, without the cutting tone of traditional griots, and on her fourth and best album, “Tchamantché” (“The Balance” or “The Middle”), her music carries the plucked modal patterns of Malian tradition toward contemplation and intimacy. Ms. Traoré’s sparse arrangements are built around terse repeated lines picked on an old Gretsch electric guitar, to be joined by her own overdubbed voices, a drum kit or a subtle human beatboxer and sometimes the dry plink of the n’goni, a small West African lute. The lyrics are in the Malian language Bambara or in French except for a lean, bluesy version of the Gershwins standard “The Man I Love.”

Sometimes Ms. Traoré still delivers messages: about cultural pride in “Dounia,” about what leaders to trust in “Koronoko” and against emigration in “Tounka,” where her voice rises in an angry rasp as she views wars and famine in Africa but insists, “Say no to exodus.” But she also offers confidential thoughts in “Zen,” in which she seeks stillness in a near-whisper amid guitar and thumb-piano syncopations, and in “Dianfa”: “Do you want to know my fears? I fear ultimate betrayal.” In “Aimer” she ponders, “So many doubts, so many questions.” Her music itself has no such misgivings; it’s carrying the public pronouncements of so much African music into new, private realms. - JON PARELES