3MA is a contemporary African music group, consisting of three players of different string instruments:

Ballaké Sissoko Ballaké Sissoko (born 1968) is a Malian player of the kora. He has worked with Toumani Diabaté and Taj Mahal, and is a member of the group 3MA with Driss El Maloumi and Rajery. Biography Ballaké's father, Djelimady Sissoko, was a notable mu ...

from

Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...

on kora,

Driss El Maloumi Driss El Maloumi (born 25 May 1970) is a Morocco, Moroccan composer and performer on the oud, the Arabic short-necked lute. He is mainly known for playing solo or in trio formations under his own name, for his long-standing cooperation with Cata ...

from

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

oud The oud ( ; , ) is a Middle Eastern short-neck lute-type, pear-shaped, fretless stringed instrument (a chordophone in the Hornbostel–Sachs classification of instruments), usually with 11 strings grouped in six courses, but some models have ...

and

Rajery Rajery, born Germain Randrianrisoa, is a player of the valiha from Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying ...

from

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

valiha The valiha is a tube zither from Madagascar made from a species of Valiha diffusa, local bamboo; it is considered the "List of national instruments (music), national instrument" of Madagascar. The term is also used to describe a number of re ...

. The band takes its name from the first two letters of each member's country of origin in

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

: ''Ma''dagascar, ''Ma''li, and ''Ma''roc.

Artistic career

The idea for an innovative African group of exclusively

string instruments In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

, with no percussion or rhythm section, was born during a first meeting in 2006 in

Agadir Agadir (, ; ) is a major List of cities in Morocco, city in Morocco, on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean near the foot of the Atlas Mountains, just north of the point where the Sous River, Souss River flows into the ocean, and south of Casabla ...

, between Moroccan

player and composer

and

, a Madagascan musician using an 18-stringed tubular zither called

. To add a third instrument with an even wider sound range, they imagined that their instruments would be well matched with a kora, the traditional Malian instrument with 21 strings and a large

calabash Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvest ...

as a

resonator A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior. That is, it naturally oscillates with greater amplitude at some frequencies, called resonant frequencies, than at other frequencies. The oscillations in a reso ...

. A few months later, they met in Madagascar, and

, a leading kora player, joined them for a series of workshops and concerts, sponsored by the local

French Institute The ; ) is a French learned society, grouping five , including the . It was established in 1795 at the direction of the National Convention. Located on the Quai de Conti in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, the institute manages approximately ...

. In an interview with nonprofit media organization

NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...

, Sissoko said: "I created the chromatic kora with two and half octaves for this project, to dialogue better with other instruments." In his positive review of the group's first album, entitled ''3MA - Madagascar, Mali, Maroc'', British music critic

Charlie Gillett Charles Thomas Gillett (; 20 February 1942 – 17 March 2010) was a British radio presenter, musicologist, and writer, mainly on rock and roll and other forms of popular music. He was particularly noted for his influential book ''The Sound of t ...

called their music ''"satisfyingly unclassifiable''", and world music magazine

Songlines A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia. They mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dr ...

, where the album reached the highest position in its

world music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

charts, qualified the trio's style as ''"African Chamber Music".'' Apart from their own albums, 3MA have also participated in the musical project called '' The Routes of Slavery''. They were invited to join their compositions, relating to the history of the slave trade from Africa, by the artistic director of this recording for audio and video,

Jordi Savall Jordi Savall i Bernadet (; born 1 August 1941) is a Spanish Conducting, conductor, composer and viol player. He has been one of the major figures in the field of Western early music since the 1970s, largely responsible for popularizing the viol ...

, with whom Driss El Maloumi has played the oud on numerous albums. ''Anarouz'' is the trio's second album, published almost ten years after the first recording. Apart from the mainly instrumental pieces, it presents the musicians also singing in their respective languages ( Bambara, Malgache and

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

Discography

* ''3MA'' (2008), Transglobal World Music Charts in January 2008 * ''Anarouz'' (2017), Songlines Music Awards 2019 *with

and other musicians: ''The Routes of Slavery,'' DVD and 2 CDs with booklet, (2016)

References

External links

3MA official website

Music video of song Anarouz (2017)Video of ''The Routes of Slavery'', with participation of 3MA
{{DEFAULTSORT:3MA Malian world music groups Moroccan world music groups Malagasy world music groups Malian musical groups Moroccan musical groups Malagasy musical groups