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
dream song writing
Without an audience, all your dreams will not come true at all, because you need an audience to write new songs and continue to do music.
thinking artist people
In general, in painting sometimes people like Picasso or somebody are not very well known in the beginning, sometimes they become well known just before they die, or sometimes after they have died. I think these people start to be artists after they've stopped existing.
artist chance thanks
When you have a chance to be an artist with an audience in your lifetime, you have to say thanks to your audience. That's a great thing. That's the best thing that can happen to an artist.
this-life happenings new-things
We're repeating the same things all the time; there aren't many new things happening in this life.
age essentials kind
I don't know if it's due to my age, that I'm older now, [but] I love the essentials. I don't like the things around us that are a kind of mirage.
song long important
I'm in a state of my life when the essential is very important to me. I don't like long songs with complicated arrangements and breaks anymore.
simple thinking life-is-like
I prefer simple things - monotone melodies repeating the same things all the time. Because I think life is like that.
self-confidence needs mali
We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.
country attitude musical
Going back and forth between Western Arabic and African countries clearly created the various musical backgrounds I could have and obviously influenced my professional attitude, my way of approaching both music composition and singing, particularly phrasing.
thinking trying
You just have to try before thinking that you can't.
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.
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.