N'famady Kouyaté

Explanation I say this somewhat frequently here, but this really is a favorite picture of mine. That said, it has a pretty significant flaw that I'll get to in a bit. First thing's first, this picture is of N'famady Kouyaté, an artist based in the UK.

N'famady Kouyaté's music is probably best described as afro-pop or afro-rock. While it has some western stylings, it has very strong inclinations towards African melodies and rhythms. I'm not super knowledgeable in regards to more details so I can't really provide more on that. As you can tell from the picture, he makes use of electric guitar as well as a less common instrument, at least in terms of Western music, the balafo. The balafo is a xylophone type instrument originating in Western Africa where N'famady Kouyaté is from. It has a very warm sound that is very inviting. When paired with his also warm and inviting singing, his music is deeply comforting, even if it isn't intelligible by English speakers. I've always been someone who is fascinated by music sung in other languages, so in that way I don't find it odd that I would enjoy his music. For context, the language he sings in is Mande, a language family spoken through much of Western Africa.

Getting to this picture, I really like the moment I captured. From his softly closed eyes to his reared up stance on the guitar, it feels very much that he's in tune with his music and his performance. There's a relaxed nature to his demeanor that contrasts with the action that is common to performers deeply in their music. I appreciate that he's the main focus, being as in focus as possible, while the balafo is a bit out of focus considering he's not actively playing it. All in all his portion, the right side of the frame is really well set and organized.

However, and here's where we get to that flaw, the left side is entirely not needed. I think one thing I tried to do a lot of throughout many of these pictures was to catch the SXSW banner where I could. Unfortunately, in my opinion for this picture and this angle, it just creates too much empty space. This might be different if there were a drummer behind him. But with him being the only major figure, it just feels empty. Instead, I should have looked to take a vertical picture. This is what a cropped picture looks like. It's the right proportions but not quite the right dimensions.



While there isn't quite as much going on, it's significantly more focused and tells a more compelling, if not more complete, story. Ultimately, I think the tradeoff is worth it though. While it is nice and informative that this picture was taken during SXSW, it's not doing anything else. Additionally, there's still enough information even without it to tell a meaningful and complete story. That's it for this one, 3 more individual posts then we'll wrap up with the rolls posts to finish up SXSW.