Kimi Djabaté: “I don’t want to be just a griot, I want to be who I am”

There was a time, not that long ago, when Kimi Djabaté was afraid. He was afraid of, among other things, being successful. His own mother, recalls Kimi, who was a child prodigy playing the balafon back home in Guinea-Bissau, would advise him against it. “Be careful,” she would say, “you’re playing and singing too well, people may want to harm you.” This virtually paralysing menace, Kimi tells me, meant that even after relocating to Portugal 26 years ago and putting a 2,000-mile distance between him and his home country, he still censored his own music, tried not to deviate from tradition and stopped himself from letting his recordings “shine.” He even asked his producers not to work too much on the albums, preferring to release them as if they were recorded live. He felt safer that way.

Now things have changed. After turning 40, Kimi decided he had lived long enough dominated by fear; at the same time, the last of his uncles threatening to harm him passed away. “When my uncles first found out I had a talent playing balafon they hated me,” he remembers, “because there was a lot of competition. That sort of competition always existed in griot families, and they all wanted their sons to be talented. So they hated me.” This did not stop his family from making money out of his talent when he was still a child. He clearly remembers being woken at night by these uncles when people in his village were willing to pay to hear him play. They profited from the situation, even if the boy grew up surrounded by envy. Later, when he settled in Portugal and became interested in making his own music, Kimi remained cautious. “I was always thinking that if I made a good record or sang about things people back home didn’t agree with, they could harm me somehow,” he says. “That’s why I kept postponing making this album.”

Being a griot, Kimi is a storyteller by both heritage and definition. He was given his first balafon when he was three years old and at eight he was an attraction in Tabatô, performing at marriages and baptisms in the region. On one occasion, taken by his mother and aunts to provide entertainment in a marriage, he was troubled by the sight of a young woman crying. He asked his mother what was going on and was told the woman was the bride and did not want to marry that man, but since it was her parents’ decision, she should not lament it. Kimi could not help himself from saying, “then she should not be married.” He was slapped by his mother, who reminded him that his job was to play and not to cause any problems.

Kimi never forgot that episode and, now that he feels free to, addresses his childhood traumas and his country’s social issues, singing about child labour, arranged marriages and women’s rights on his fourth album, Dindin. “Arranged marriages are still happening in Guinea-Bissau today, and of course it’s not right for someone to decide on your life. The violence against women is also [discussed] on this record. I grew up seeing my uncles beat up their wives. And I wanted to sing about all these things I’ve been silent about all my life.”

When the last of his intimidating uncles passed away in 2015, Kimi was about to release his third album, Kanamalu (2016). And although his records were met with praise globally, when he looks back now he confesses that they were a bit too traditional, the consequence of feeling he had to pay respect to the griot tradition. “Griots have a strict musical style, and you can’t move away from it,” he explains. “There are a lot of rules. But I always felt that music does not have borders and should be played the way each of us feels it. Being griot and playing only griot music, playing just balafon, that doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m still a griot, it just happens that I can’t keep playing the same music that’s been played the same way for centuries. Everything has its time, and all genres of music can and should evolve. And for my music to evolve, I had to find different sounds.” And that is where Dindin comes from.

And it is quite clear what Kimi means when we listen to ‘Alidonke’, a love song where Kimi’s desert blues guitar floats over an Afrobeat-inspired rhythm – inspired by the music he found as a teenager when he stayed up until 4am listening to a radio programme from Gabonese radio station Africa No 1. It’s a combination we also hear in ‘Afonhe’, which takes in gumbé rhythms as well. There’s also the acoustic joy of ‘O Manhe’, where Kimi questions arranged marriages and stands openly for women’s rights in Africa. But there are also hints of blues, jazz, Afro-Portuguese rhythms, and the Bissau-Guinean equivalents to Cape Verde’s morna and funaná in Dindin’s ample palette.

Dois passos (Bissau-Guinean funaná) paves the way for the splendid track that inspired the album title. ‘Dindin’ (Children) is a beautiful and sad song that speaks of what Djabaté describes as “child slavery.” He says, “until we put an end to this, we are losing the children of today. We are making these children the same as we were, eternalising this issue. ‘Dindin’ talks about this situation, crucial in Guinea-Bissau but also in other African countries, where children are used as a source of income. They don’t go to school and they are not prepared for their future.” Having been exploited himself, he knows what he’s talking about, and that stability can only come from ending that cycle.

In 2019 Kimi featured on an album by the pop legend Madonna, singing on ‘Ciao Bella’, after the pair met in Portugal and became friends. Madonna had already fallen in love with the song ‘Ná’ (also featured on Dindin), which Kimi wrote for his late mother, when he got a call asking him to play at a private show. Kimi and Madonna quickly hit it off and after playing ‘Ná’ that same evening, at her request (with the Queen of Pop improvising over the top), their friendship was sealed.

But that, as he surely knows, does not define him. Because he’s reached his own truth now. And he sums that up beautifully: “I don’t want to be just a griot, I want to be who I am.”

Read the review: Kimi Djabaté’s Dindin

This interview originally appeared in the March 2023 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today