Rokia Traore

Rokia Traore
Rokia Traoréis a Victoires de la Musique award-winning Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist, born in Mali as a member of the Bambara ethnic group. Her father was a diplomat and she travelled widely in her youth. She visited such countries as Algeria, Saudi Arabia, France and Belgium and was exposed to a wide variety of influences. Her hometown of Kolokani is in the northwestern part of Mali's Koulikoro region...
NationalityMalian
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth26 January 1974
hardly
A melody without the right rhythm hardly exists.
call discovered family genres music musical
Not what you would call a musical family, but my father used to play saxophone, and I discovered many genres of music when I was a child.
dancing interesting singing
I can change the arrangements on stage while I am playing or singing, doing signs to the musicians to change things because the audience is dancing or singing with us. That's the interesting part of the live show, actually, because everything is possible and everything can change.
country people trying
Everybody does music from his culture and his experiences with his culture. There are not so many people who are interested by the music coming from different countries and different cultures and trying to make music from that, from all these experiences.
thinking unique trying
I don't think I'm unique or that I'm trying to do something unique, but I feel it is something I would like to hear. This kind of music I would like to listen to but I can't hear very often.
unique thinking way
You can't be unique any way. Music is made from seven notes. You will always come back to something. Even if you think you are unique, you will come back to something that existed before you were doing what you are doing.
country unique thinking
My influences are jazz, blues, European classical music; they are rock music and pop music. So many kinds of music. World music from different countries like India and China. I think that would be a shame not to take advantage and do something... not unique, because I don't have this pretension.
father interesting together
The interesting thing for me is to put together all my influences and all my experiences I got through my traveling with my father.
writing way knows
There are some things around us that are not actually useful. I didn't know that before. It's very new for me to understand. That became my way of writing: I can see also the new myself.
guitar play sound
Of course the folk guitar is the one I play very often, but I wanted a more electric sound.
thinking trying
You just have to try before thinking that you can't.
thinking personality way
Traveling changed my personality and gave me ability to do the music I do and to think in a certain way that everything can be possible.
dream mind singing
The fact of playing an instrument and singing... that I can try to make my dream of singing and becoming a professional musician come true is linked probably to the fact that I traveled a lot, which gave me an open mind and an ability to push my limits.
father careers able
My father was not able to get all the vinyl he used to listen to with me. He couldn't travel as he did it because of his profession as a diplomatic career.