Malian master-musician Toumani Diabate has a new album recorded in collaboration with his Friday night crew of Bamako's best musicians. He tells Jim Carroll about his boulevard of swinging dreams

MOST Friday nights, Toumani Diabate has a certain routine. Some time around midnight, the Malian master-musician will gather his koras, leave his house on the outskirts of Bamako and head to the N'Tomikorobougou neighbourhood of the city. His destination, as it has been for most Fridays over the last 10 years, is a club called Le Hogon. There he has a date with the Symmetric Orchestra, a freewheeling collection of local and visiting musicians.

There are countless clubs in the Malian capital. From Oumou Sangare's Wassulu Hôtel Résidence to the likes of the Élysée or the Espace Bouna, you'll find the country's many musicians coming together to mint new music and rework old tricks. Bamako is at the heart of west Africa's musical mix, and the clubs are where those new and old sounds are aired.

For Diabate, Le Hogon is the lab where he and his band cut loose. Forget the majestic kora sounds for which he made his name on the New Ancient Strings album; this is something else entirely.

Le Hogon is one of many new clubs which cropped up in the city after Moussa Traore's government was overthrown and the movement to democracy began in 1991. Hundreds of locals and the odd tourist gather on the open-air verandas to hear what the jam will produce. The session usually starts late and ends even later.

Diabate says Le Hogon has something that other spaces in the city don't: an appreciative audience. "People come here to meet each other and to hear music," he says. "It's a lot different to the other nightclubs that you'll find in Bamako because of that. It attracts a much more open audience, and the musicians who go there are keen to collaborate and make new music."

This interview takes place on a Friday evening, but Diabate is in London. Tonight, the Orchestra will play on without its leader. "The band will tape the performance for me and I'll listen to it when I get back to Bamako on Monday."

Diabate is on the road to plug a new album, Boulevard de l'Indépendance, one of three which World Circuit recorded at the Hotel Mande in the Malian capital in summer 2004. (The others are Diabate's heart-warming collaboration with the late Ali Farka Toure and a solo Toure album.)

Boulevard is the sound of the Friday night fever you experience at Le Hogon coming through your speakers. It's a dashing, giddy sound, every musician hitting the right notes and forging something new, bold and bright.

For Diabate, Boulevard has been a long time coming. "To me, it has been 15 years in the making. I've been playing at Le Hogon for over 10 years, but I think a lot of the ideas I'm working out with this album were there long before then. What the Le Hogon shows have meant is more power and atmosphere for my music. I have my own style as a kora player, but the Symmetric Orchestra takes that style into a whole new place."

Diabate's kora prowess is the stuff of legend. Coming from a line of some 60-plus generations of Manding griots and musicians, he picked up the harp-like instrument when he was a child and never left it down.

His father, Sidiki Diabate, was a key kora innovator, but he wasn't around to coach his son. "I never went out at night. I would stay at home and play the kora into the early hours of the morning." Within a few years, Diabate had outgrown the seven-string kora and moved onto the full 21-string version.

The life of a professional musician beckoned. Tours with Kandia Kouyate and Ousmane Sacko brought him to London in the late 1980s. There, he recorded his debut album (Kaira) and began a series of collaborations, first with Spanish flamenco act Ketama and then the Symmetric Orchestra. During the 1990s, his distinctive playing cropped on albums by Ali Farka Toure and Salif Keita.

However, it was New Ancient Strings which alerted many to Diabate's skills. A generation before, Diabate's father had recorded a classic album called Cordes Anciennes (Ancient Strings), so it was apt that the son's fresh look at the same traditions would also update the title.

Diabate provides a new perspective on the music he had been hearing all his life. "I take the old Malian songs and give them modern arrangements. I set new compositions to old music. People want to hear something which mixes the old and the new, but you still have to remain true to yourself. If you forget the past, you'll lose your way. You must remember that the griot people in our society are the archive of the Malian west African empire. We take care of the history when we play the music."

While Diabate is happy to talk about his new album, he's also keen to remember Ali Farka Toure. After all, it was last year's In the Heart of the Moon, the award-winning collaboration between the two Malians, which has whetted appetites for Boulevard. There may be a solo Toure album still to come, but it was this collaboration which reminded audiences of what the guitarist could do.

Diabate remembers the recording session with fondness. "I wanted to record songs from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, so I told him we had to rehearse because we hadn't played these songs together before. But Ali said 'no Toumani, no need to rehearse, I'll follow you, do what you want.'

"He brought his guitar, I brought my kora and we played just like that, one piece at a time. We recorded one piece for five or 10 minutes, then it was 'OK, that's great, next', and onto the next piece. We made the album in six hours."

The good news is that there's another release to come, recorded at World Circuit's London studio the day after the duo had performed in the Barbican last summer. Diabate says that album will probably surprise us yet again. For now, though, it's selling the Symmetric Orchestra which is foremost in his mind.

"My music has always been about tradition," Diabate says, "but sometimes you have to make new traditions, too. I like to think of the Symmetric Orchestra as the Mali music of tomorrow."

Boulevard de l'Indépendance is out now on World Circuit. Toumani Diabate and the Symmetric Orchestra play World Routes at the National Concert Hall and Iveagh Gardens, Dublin on July 22nd