*** Boubacar Traoré MACIRE (Indigo/Harmonia Mundi)

Boubacar Traoré, a Malian troubadour who's also known as Kar Kar, has largely flown under the radar here in the US, despite the continued interest in Mali's neo-traditional music. But his guitar elegies are as probing and profound as Ali Farka Touré's, and his meditations on social ills as revealing as Oumou Sangaré's. Indeed, many may find Kar Kar's reflective, guitar-driven songs more approachable than the music of Mali's celebrated roots-pop icons. The nickname Kar Kar dates back to the early '60s, when Traoré was a radio sensation in newly independent Mali. He later drifted into obscurity, to be rediscovered in the late '80s by Europeans on the world-music trail.

Macire departs from at least three earlier titles in its inclusion of musicians from younger singing star Habib Koite's band, Bamada. These musicians add calabash percussion, violin, and balafon to Kar Kar's cycling acoustic-guitar laments, and they fill out the sound with rich backing vocals. There's a world-weary feeling, just short of cynicism, in some of the lyrics: "Do a favor for a woman, she takes you for a fool/Do a favor for a man, he thinks you blind." Whether eulogizing his late wife or decrying the state of civil society, Kar Kar conveys melancholy and nostalgia without a trace of sentimentality -- no mean feat, even for a seasoned desert folkie.

-- Banning Eyre

(Boubacar Traoré performs at the House of Blues next Sunday, October 1. Call 491-BLUE.)