KUNBE

Biography

KUNBE the  "meeting" (in Bambara) is the result of several years of exchange and cooperation between three Malian musicians and three French musicians.

Right in the midst of Bamako, an artistic formation carried on by Trempolino (resources and

formation centre in Nantes) has enabled European musicians since 2008 to discover

arrangements techniques on the amplified music from West Africa. Between the participation of Malian musicians and Vincent Livenais (keyboards musician and coordinator of this traineeship) is born the will to take up a new artistic adventure associating his two brothers Jean-Louis (guitars) and Antoine (bass). The French-Malian project  KUNBE is thus created in spring 2012.

Faithful to their rock background, the Livenais have already carried out several mixing projects with African artists. From 1994 to 1996, with Caline Georgette & Jimi Hope (Togo) and since 2000 with Lassana Coulibaly, creator of the Yelemba company of Abidjan (Ivory Coast), with

which they founded the afro-rock band Akeikoi. They also accompanied and produced many artists among whom Paco Kon (Burkina Faso), Segun Ola (Nigeria). This new artistic fusion is based on the melodic world of the singer Mountaga Diabat (Super Rail Band of Bamako), coming from a family of griots, whose Malinke style (Mandinka) is dominating and gives the guidelines for the arrangements. With the drummer Morissanda Diabat, they make up a singing/drums duo that surprises though its complicity, on which the guitarist Skou Marcel Coulibaly lays his flying melodies with virtuosity and lightness.

Ever with this same singularity to spontaneously associate with the greatest integrity the energy and colour of rock with African poly-rhythmic turneries, the Livenais Brothers bring to KUNBE a perfectly assumed particularity, in a musical world already well-known by the public, the Mandinka music one.

It is with the complicity and close cooperation with Barou Oumar Diallo, musician, producer and essential figure of the Malian music world, that the  KUNBE adventure was created, with an undisputable success, in the audience's regards as well as the programmers'.

Recorded in March 2012 in Yeelen studio (Mali), and in June 2013 in Adjololo studio (France), the first album by  KUNBE will be released in 2014.

Discography

Album Bamako groove 2014 (Adjololo Records / Yeleen)