Oh Bembeya!

Photo: Banning Eyre
Bembeya singers, Angoulême Festival,
May 2002

At first, Conde's band played for dances - from 9:00 pm until morning - and they traveled to towns in nearby Cote D'Ivoire. In 1962, they recorded their first album with the help of a young Armenian-American named Leo Sarkisian. Leo would go on to become a legendary producer and broadcaster for the Voice Of America where he still works today at the age of 81. But at that time, he was working for a Hollywood record company called Tempo International, which in its quest for foreign music to use in film scores, had equipped him with rugged, portable recording gear and dispatched him to Afghanistan, then to Ghana, and now Guinea to record New Sounds From A New Nation."

Upon his arrival in Conakry, Leo was detained and liberated of his gear. But after sizing Leo up, Sekou Toure decided to work with him, equipping him with a technician, a griot guide named Sidiki Diabaté, a vehicle, and sometimes even the president's private airplane so that they could get around the country and record the new music bubbling up everywhere.

"We started going from region to region making recordings," Leo told me in 1995, still a little awestruck that Sekou Toure had actually read his first field report and invited him in for in introductory chat. "Even though this was a great opportunity for me, and I was using [these Guinean officials] to do all my recordings, they were also using me for information. Sekou Toure had established the PDG, the People's Democratic Party, and the party was establishing political cells all through the country to create national unity. So when we would go into a region and hear what ensembles and groups were singing and playing, Sekou Toure wanted to know this, to see if they were talking about political stuff. Everybody at that time was supposed to sing about the PDG." According to Leo, the musicians were only too happy to do this. He never uncovered any protesters or malcontents.