{"id":376,"date":"2010-06-10T22:50:12","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T03:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=376"},"modified":"2014-02-17T13:31:38","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T19:31:38","slug":"bassekou-kouyate-and-ngoni-ba-61010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba (6\/10\/10)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Malian musician Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba played at the Pritzker Pavilion in\u00a0Millennium Park on Thursday, 10 June 2010. Their music was exhilarating and thrilling. It continues to amaze me that they can get so much music out of such \u201cprimitive\u201d-looking instruments as the <a title=\"ngoni\" href=\"http:\/\/www.coraconnection.com\/pages\/ngoni.html\"><em>ngoni<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ngoni.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-829\" alt=\"Ngoni\" src=\"http:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ngoni.jpg\" width=\"442\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As someone who is still learning to play a six-string <em>fretted<\/em> guitar, It\u2019s hard to imagine how one can play a four-stringed unfretted instrument with such apparent ease and precision.\u00a0They played their hypnotic music for a little over an hour.<\/p>\n<p>As an introduction to the Chicago Blues Festival that began the following night, \u00a0Barry Dollins came on stage and announced the Howlin\u2019 Wolf tribute (yesterday was the 100<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of his birth). Otis Taylor came out with Eddie Shaw and Hubert Sumlin. They played a few Wolf tunes (\u201cSpoonful,\u201d \u201cBack Door Man,\u201d \u201cShake It\u201d) with the Kouyate group. Taylor played a white Fender Telecaster, Shaw played sax and sang, and Sumlin played his well-worn Strat. He had his oxygen tank with him and had to sit, but he seemed to be having a good time.<\/p>\n<p>The jam was a chaotic mess. Taylor mostly just played a rhythm line. Sumlin\u2019s guitar was hard to hear whenever he got a chance to solo. I imagine they never rehearsed, but I\u2019m surprised that they didn\u2019t do it so everyone got a chance to be heard. Fortunately, I&#8217;d heard Otis Taylor and Hubert Sumlin before so I knew what they were capable of, but it wasn&#8217;t a good introduction for new listeners.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Malian musician Bassekou Kouyate and his band Ngoni Ba played at the Pritzker Pavilion in\u00a0Millennium Park on Thursday, 10 June 2010. Their music was exhilarating and thrilling. It continues to amaze me that they can get so much music out of such \u201cprimitive\u201d-looking instruments as the ngoni. As someone who is still learning to play [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11,13,21],"tags":[89,87,90,23,24,93,88,92],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":830,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byronleonard.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}