“Any goal must have a reason, Any success is based on a reason, Any failure is based on a goal without a reason.”
These are the opening words, feverishly sung in Bambara, of the song “Kènia” on Rokia Traoré’s sixth album, Né So (Home). They are also the best way to encapsulate the Mali-born singer’s strength throughout her nearly 20-year musical journey. The decision to take up music is sometimes guided by a career plan, or a burning urge, or an attempt to gain some recognition, or even the desire to pass on a legacy. But Rokia Traoré’s path is of a different kind, rooted as it has been since she released her first record, Mouneïssa, in the force of will and the movements of her heart.
The fundamental question of choices and responsibilities has always been Traoré’s center of gravity. Before initiating any new project, she asks herself, “Why keep playing music, and how?” This time, she did so with unprecedented urgency. At the time, she found herself in private and public worlds colliding in quite a hazardous manner.
Traoré had always been a traveler, but in 2009, she decided to move back to Mali. Three years later, she bore witness as her country’s civil war gained terrible momentum. “Experiencing life in a war-torn country was traumatic. I became aware of how naïve I had been without even knowing it,” she confesses.
While she had left Bamako for a while and moved to Europe with her young son, she also experienced personal issues that threatened her status and legitimacy as a musician. “To make a long story short, being a female artist, especially an African living in Africa, makes you sound not credible as a mother,” she says. Besides, the music industry was facing a crisis, which only added to her distressing doubts, to the point of almost calling it quits, artistically speaking.
The art of picking yourself up and moving on is an implicit theme of Né So. “Everything was falling apart,” she says. “It’s never easy to go through tough times, but it is also what makes you grow, and understand why you cling to certain things and give up on some others. At some point, I realized that I was either going to make it, or just add my name to the long list of female artists who ended badly,” Traoré says. “When people write their biographies, they talk less about their music or talent than their personal rifts. I asked myself, ‘Do I want to end up in that kind of book? Or should I take a chance and get on with it?’ I really had to make some tough decisions. I did, and I’m glad I made the right ones.”
