I recently discovered the music of African guitarist Papa Diabaté or Grand Papa Diabaté, and his brother Sekou Diabaté. Apprently not much is known about him outside Guinea, where he was a big influence, and he recorded little; just an album in the 1990s called Guitar, Extra Dry and some tracks on a series of anthology albums in the 1970s. There's also a compilation called African Virtuoses (although be forewarned that the final song on this album on both iTunes and Amazon Prime streaming appears to be corrupted). The style is finger-picking, upbeat, with a lot of intricate details and what I think is a pretty obvious influence from French guitar jazz and Spanish flamenco. Some of the pieces on African Virtuoses, for instance, are just straight out flamenco. But here is a marvelous track from one of the anthology albums:
Update: After some more investigating, I've learned that Papa Diabate is quite an elusive figure, but also quite influential, something like the Robert Johnson of Guinea. One of his few other recordings is on the 1998 album Guitare Seche, by his student Djessou Mory Kante, which is quite lovely in itself. Here's a clip.
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