Malam Maman Barka was raised in the Toubou community of Tesker, where camels are more prized than money and tea is more necessary than food. The Toubous are a relatively small, nomadic ethnic group in eastern Niger, northern Chad, and southern Libya. Their origins are primarily in the land that is now Chad as the word Toubou means "man from Tibesti," referring to the Tibesti Mountains of northern Chad. As with other nomadic herders, traditional Toubou life is clan-based, revolving around their family ties and the rhythms of their camels and cows. Although Toubous possess a fearsome reputation as warriors and fighters, Malam Barka once explained to me that it is not that Toubous are more violent than others but merely that once a fight starts it is inevitable that someone dies. The Toubou ideal of friendship as defined by Malam Barka is that if your friend tells you that someone is dead in the desert, you don't ask questions, you just help your friend to bury the body while it is still night. Given these rather steep expectations, Malam Barka naturally questioned the depth and sincerity of his friendships in Niamey, Niger's capital. Despite the intimidating image Toubous have conjured, one of Tesker's revered elders once assured me that although perhaps violence rules elsewhere, in Tesker there is only music and dance.
Malam Barka's first musical experiences involved listening to the tcheguendi, a two-stringed lute. Although like other West African peoples, the Toubous have their hereditary caste of musicians and praise singers, who drum and sing of important families and historical exploits, the tcheguendi is an instrument played by all or nearly all young Toubou men and is a vehicle to court young women for marriage. Malam Barka explained to me that all instruments in Niger have their function, and the purpose of the tcheguendi is to allow a young Toubou man to demonstrate his uniqueness and talent in the eyes of the young women. The songs that I heard were all subtly absorbing, almost hypnotic as familiar rhythmic patterns were strummed on the instrument with constant variations and individual melody notes cascaded from the loping rhythms. The lyrics and melodies were drawn from a traditional well of phrases, but each performance was spontaneously augmented with lines and observations to address the moment at hand with wit and significance. To think that a young man would develop such powers of expression and people would take such joy from the music and then suddenly stop upon marriage was incredible to me. But like bird songs, these songs had a specific mission and like peacocks with their feathers displayed their beauty had both evolutionary and aesthetic origins. To hear the women's ululations resound in the night sky like machine gun fire pinging off the stars in response to a particularly pleasing passage, one knew that mission was accomplished. And just as one young Toubou gives the tcheguendi to the next to play and pass the time, upon marriage one generation passes the tcheguendi along with its powers onto the next to start anew.
Born with nomadic values, Malam Barka has pursued a restlessly creative path all his life. Perhaps it was his fate or perhaps it was because he was too seduced himself by the sounds and magic of the music he heard growing up, but Malam Barka's musical life was spared the somewhat tragic destiny meted out to most non-griot Toubous when his family left Tesker. Malam Barka pursued a career in education and by the age of 16 was not only teacher but headmaster. He recounts how he was not even tall enough to write the date on the blackboard. It was in the Hausa village of Kaouboul, where he was stationed, that he began playing the gurumi. He heard a musician named Warsou playing "Nana Logoi Logoi" and he was so taken with the song that he asked Warsou how to play it. At first, Malam Barka's goal was merely to learn that one song in order to play for himself. It wouldn't be long before he had invented a whole new style of playing the gurumi and begun to write his own songs. From Warsou, he learned a style of playing the gurumi that was mainly strummed accompaniment to singing. However, he bought a cassette of the great Nigerian gurumi player, Haruna Ugi, whom he heard beating out a rhythm with a ring while playing. Trying to duplicate this style, Malam Barka developed a technique whereby he put a ring on his thumb, keeping a steady beat on the gurumi neck, and played single notes with his first finger with both up and down strokes in a manner reminiscent of clawhammer banjo playing. It was only later when Malam Barka saw Haruna Ugi perform that he realized that Haruna kept the ring on his second finger and played with a completely different technique. Malam Barka's innovation has since caught on as one of the primary ways to play the gurumi.
Musical technique was not the only innovation that Malam Barka brought to gurumi music in Niger. The most fundamental change that he represented was that of a non-griot taking up the instrument and playing professionally, making his debut at a festival in Zinder in the mid-1980s. By 1987, he had made his international debut in the unlikely locale of Pyongyang, North Korea. As an artist, Malam Barka has always remained free of aligning himself with specific political ideologies and so he was not taken in by the propaganda on display in that hermetic state's capital, but he was quite impressed with how clean and orderly the streets of Pyongyang were and felt Niamey could learn a thing or two from their example. By 1987, he was also recording his first albums and singing in languages never before sung with a gurumi, whose traditional languages were Hausa and Beri-Beri. Malam Barka is a cosmopolitan man and a true pan-Nigerien musician who sings in nine national languages, including a number of well-known songs in French. A prolific songwriter with over 250 compositions to his credit, Malam Barka has created a whole repertoire and musical style that resonates profoundly with many modern Nigeriens who love their traditional music but also want songs that address pressing issues of contemporary life and transcend ethnic boundaries. It is as a result of this deep connection that so many Nigeriens feel with his songs that he has traveled broadly internationally as a musical ambassador of his Sahelian homeland. He has performed throughout West Africa in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Togo, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Chad, but also in such countries as China, Japan, Pakistan, Morocco, Algeria, France, Germany, Spain, and Holland.
Malam Barka's apprenticeship to the last living master of the biram in the Boudouma village of Doro Lelewa starting in 2002 represents a new phase in his life mission. The biram is a beautiful and sacred instrument of the Boudouma people that was and is in serious danger of dying out. Malam Barka's devotion to the instrument is not only a testament to his musical artistry but his dedication to the preservation and enrichment of Nigerien traditional arts. For Malam Barka, who has worked for a number of years at CFPM (le Centre de Formation et de Promotion Musicale) in Niamey, the preservation and promotion of not only his music but all traditional music of Niger are of the utmost importance. Recently, he has brought this passion of his to the airwaves, hosting a popular morning radio show, "Bonjour le Niger."
Nathaniel Berndt - Malam Maman Barka: His Life and Music (Apr 14, 2008)