“Who is  Jah?”

And everyone knows Jah Youssouf.  Rising from nowhere with nowhere to go, he is the musician that everyone holds close to their soul, close to their heart.  He is themselves.  The drunkard who still cares.  The cheated who watch politicians walk away with their wealth.  The lover who loves his family and who always will.  The anyone of us who has broken a rule and knows that we can be better.

Jah Youssouf was born in 1970 in the village of Lemouroutoumou, Bougouni Municipality, Region of Sikasso in Mali.   Jah did not have the chance to go to public school.  He learned from the ground up.  For a few years he attended Koranic school.  For the most part the school of life.  And music.

Music was inside every corner of Jah’s life.  Weddings.  Funerals.  Just plain evenings wrapped in the fading heat of a long African day, Culture, his culture, was his blood.  Before he can remember, he began drumming djimbé, a small kid on the side, allowed to play in, participating, listening, adding to the colour of his people, their days, their dreams.  Only one day to find himself drumming along with the best in a government organized festival, early in the 1980’s, supported and watched by the Minister of Culture.  These were the haydays of public investment in Malian culture and Jah was fed on it.

He soon went beyond the djimbé.  Jah discovered his own sound in playing other traditional instruments such as the “kamalen goni” (n’goni), the barra, the didadi, and others.  At the age of 12, he left for Côte.d’Ivoire where he remained for a long time with his grandmother.  Life was not easy.  Family had been torn apart by the necessity for migrant labour, catastrophic drops in the price of cotton due to American subsidies to their own farmers, the mess in the interests of the global wealthy otherwise called development for all of Africa.

In Côte d’Ivoire Jah began selling and making musical instruments.  In 1992, his natural confidence took root and he decided to set off on his own musical career.  He formed a band of eight musicians, including three women, and began to perform independently.  It was the beginning of his taxi driver fame.

Soon enough, he met the attention of Maikano, a famous West African music producer and composer.  His first album followed soon.  In 1995, Jah came out with “Ne toun be min”, or “My Drinking”.  It was Jah.  Pure and simple.  Jah drives down, deep into his youth, the rough, the hurt, the loneliness – the alcohol.  Life was too much and the drinking, he soon learned, only made it worse.  “Ne toun be min” was all about drinking, drinking young, and what a waste it was.

But Jah was always bigger than himself.  Pulling himself up, in 1998 he came out with another eight track album: “Nèguè Nèguè Bana”, or “Quit the small talk”.  With this album, politicians became his target.  He denounced the political travesty of his nation’s peoples.  International development, the moniker for post colonial exploitation in the worst of senses, needed a new language.  West Africa’s politicians were wholly responsible for defending, having faith in, and building their own continent.

No surprise that, in 2002, his third album revolved around the theme of money (“Wari”).  These songs describe the way that greed chases greed and builds nothing but a tower of glass.  Catastrophe follows all who kneel for money.

As fate has it, in 2004 a few Canadians congregated in Bamako, Mali, to produce a documentary film about the role of music in the international development industry.  Within days, Jah was on the scene, producing in under 17 hours a wholly new album that rocks with all the politics and sound that puts West African music on the 21st century world stage.  The album “Son, Son, Son” came out of DROG Studio, Guelph Canada, in 2006.  In partnership with Seydoni-Mali Studios, Bamako, Jah put out a fifth album in 2006.  This album makes space for Jah’s diverse skills and allows him to explore the world of popular music.

Jah’s popularity stems from his untiring presence on the tour scene, no small feat in the heat of Sahalian West Africa.  His tours have included: 

• Festival Tabalé - organized by the Sharing Foundation and sponsored by the then Mali’s First Lady Mrs. Konaré Adam Bah.

• Festival Echo AIDS - organized by the Sharing Foundation where he was officially recognized by the Honourable Participation Award in 1995.

• 1995 Mali Music Festival.

• 1997-1998 – 2000 – 2004 – 2006 - national and international tours through Mali, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire.

Jah’s tours, participation in festivals, and, of course, his music have established a wide spread and growing network.  Most importantly, his commitment to traditional, West African culture, sustains his following and the quality of his music.  One can hear this in all his songs and in his endearing devotion to the use of traditional instruments, including:

• the djimbé for percussion

• the karagna, which is used generally by hunters during ceremonies

• the m’bolow, three stringed instrument used to accompany the guitar

• the calabash, used in percussion

• the congoni, a small percussion instrument played with a small stick

• the kamalen goni (n’goni), an eight stringed instrument which resembles m’bolow

With these instruments, Jah Youssouf has been able to produce diverse traditional musical genres.

 He is devoted to his wife, who sings on his albums, and his two children.  He lives with his extended family and remains amongst the most friendly, open, sincere, and committed of artists.   For all of Jah’s efforts, he remains effectively penniless.