Sory Kandia Kouyaté: Guinea’s Voice Of Revolution

Sory Kandia Kouyaté was one of the most celebrated singers in West Africa when he died suddenly in 1977. He was just 44, and given his spectacular voice, it’s a safe bet that Kouyaté would have been an international star had he lived just a few years longer. Now, some of his finest recordings have been collected on a two-disc retrospective called La Voix de la Révolution.

With Kouyaté, the voice is everything. Few African singers of any era could match him on technique, articulation or sheer power. Many of his songs, like “Tara,” are part of the centuries-old Mande praise-song tradition, which he inherited through his family line. But in Kouyaté’s heyday, the 1960s and ’70s, that tradition was getting a jazzy, big-band makeover in Guinea.

In “Tara,” the plinking notes of the ancient wooden balafon tumble right into the popular Latin rhythms of the day. Africa was opening to the world, and nothing drove the point home better than Kouyaté’s sublime tenor.