The National Badema which is among the more prestigious orchestra of Mali contributed a lot to settle the great notoriety of our country.

The experience began with the return of the “Cubans”; that is to say the group of young musicians the independent Mali had sent for formation in Cuban. Some of them were Boncana, Moustapha, Bah Tapo, Tino, Alou Traoré, Salif Kéita; Mahamane Touré... a part of this young people formed the band “As Marabias”, which reputation quickly spread over the frontiers of the country. During one of their tours in Guinea, they were received by late Ahmed Sékou Touré because he was very seduced by their compositions. However, the first president of Guinea Conakry make them remark that the name of their band has a lusophone consonance. He then advised them to give it a name coming from the country. That’s how the band became the “National Badema” in 1976.

Later on, the rivalry caused by the success of the band pushed some founders like Khalil Traoré to leave the band. Fortunately, this didn’t stop the band which continued even without Bah Tapo, Baba Traoré, and Dramane Coulibaly under the direction of Harouna Barry (artistic director since 1986).

“The force of the Badema is that we have a varied repertoire. We are not contenting with only afro-Cuban any more. We made big efforts on the arrangements of folkloric songs such as “Fôgnana”, “Kuma”, “Namah”, “Guédé”, “Touramakan”, “Namory”...”, said M. Barry. Thanks to the government, the orchestra had annually one retirement month. That’s how Harouna and his musicians went to Koutiala (1975), Bougouni (1976) and Markala (1977) to enrich their repertoire.
There were a lot of rupture periods in the evolution of the Badema. Thus, after the leaving of the “Cubans”, it’s the one of Kassé Mady Diabaté which has been very hard for the band. “The departure of Kassé Mady put us in a very difficult situation because he’s not an artist that can be easily replaced. After him, I tried a lot of young artists who didn’t give me satisfaction. The positive thing in this event is that it pushed us to question and start over on new bases” said the maestro. This departure was seen in the compositions and arrangements.

So a new repertoire was born with the name of “Mali postcard”. “This menu contained music of all the regions of Mali. We reconstituted the repertoire without griot music with which we had a lot of success with Kassé Mady”. This new takeoff was facilitated by the talent and experience of Mamah Sissoko, Sidi Coulibaly and ADS. The arrival of Mah Kouyaté N°1 helped a lot also because in addition to her beauty and her wonderful voice, this singer has a mastership in folkloric songs of several ethnical group of Mali.

“It would be ungrateful to speak of the National Badema without evoking the help of Alpha Oumar Konaré. When he was minister of Sports, Arts and Culture in 1978, he equipped the Badema. The Badema waited until his appointment as President in 1994 to receive new instruments on his initiative. He did his best to make the Badema play his real role of National orchestra by taking part in all the events of the nation’s life (official receptions, international conferences…). This gave us the opportunity to highlight the experience of the band.”

The discography of the Badema is far to reflect the notoriety it acquired during several tours in Africa and in the world. The first disk “Guédé” was released in 1970. The second “Can 2002” waited until 2001. It’s a wonderful album with varied sonorities which texts inspired speeches at the eve and during the Africa nation’s football competition “Mali 2002”. Unfortunately, this album did not meet the success expectations. Harouna Barry explains that “we have been the firsts to sing for the CAN because our song relates the attribution of the competition to Mali. It gives valour to the spirit of sport: win with dignity and lose with dignity… but some animators and journalists denied us this pioneer role by tempting to shut down our work.” The maestro left to his successor an entire album.
Extract from the article "Badema National" de Moussa Bolly.
Lien : http://mali-music.com/Cat/CatB/Badema.htm