Habib Koité tours the world music circuit, and has for thirty years, but he is neither a traditional artist, nor does he play a groove-based music that crosses borders through global rhythms. He is a studied, careful singer-songwriter who over the course of a long career has released only six albums of mostly original songs written in multiple languages from his native Mali. “Composing is a terrible process for me, it explains all the white hair I have,” he told Songlines magazine. As a guitarist, he plays without flash - but excels at a subtle vocabulary he has developed on a Canadian-made, electro-acoustic nylon string guitar, the Godin Multiac. He is, in short, a one-off. Perhaps all great artists are. And perhaps that’s why they so often don’t fit the model of any given genre, much less one based on such a vague (and vaguely suspect) concept as “world” music.
Still, what is a working musician to do but tour the available cir…
