BAMAKO, Mali — On a moonlit African night in a leafy open-air bar, kora virtuoso Toumani Diabate is peeling off kaleidoscopic riffs from a 21-string cow-skin-covered harp like those his forefathers have played for more than 70 generations.

Past a motley array of modern-day musicians and traditional drummers, a 2 a.m. crowd of Bamako's hippest has come to listen to a man many regard as the best kora player on the planet.

The music is East meets West, past meets present, a 21st century take on ancient Malian harmonies that smacks of flamenco, Far Eastern strings and the legato improvisations of freeform jazz.

For Diabate, the show is much more than just music: it's the preservation of culture and tradition, a way to keep alive the spirit of the defunct Mande empire that once stretched across a vast swathe of west Africa.

Long before the region's history was recorded in books, it was told through a caste of griots, musical storytellers. Seven centuries later, the songs are still sung over powerful rhythms and haunting pentatonic scales produced on traditional instruments like the banjo-esque ngoni and wooden xylophone-like balafon, and by kora players from Guinea to Niger.

"If west Africa was a living being, the griot would be the blood," Diabate says over lunch at his Bamako home, scooping couscous and fish from a silver tray on his Persian-carpeted floor. "As griots, we are the memory, we are the link between society and the past."

Born in Bamako in the mid-1960s — he doesn't know exactly when — Diabate began playing the kora at age 5. Formally educated for only about 10 years, a disease in his youth shriveled his right leg and leaves him still walking with a crutch.

The first kora player to win a Grammy remains always ready to shake the hand of a fan, even while he's performing.

Last year, Diabate won a Grammy with "Heart of the Moon," a series of unrehearsed duets with late Malian blues guitarist Ali Farka Toure. The songs were recorded in just two hours.

In 1987, he recorded his debut CD, an acoustic solo work called "Kaira," meaning "peace." He went on to experiment in collaborations with Spanish flamenco guitarists and Japanese musicians, and in a 1999 "Kulanjan" alliance with U.S. bluesman Taj Mahal on steel-string guitar.

The same year he released "New Ancient Strings," kora duets performed with Ballake Sissoko in an interpretation of a seminal 1970s recording made by their fathers and credited with introducing kora music to the world.

Diabate says such instrumentals allow foreigners to understand Mande culture.

"Music has its own language," Diabate says. In the modern world, "you have lots of books about the histories. We have the Internet, we have mobile phones. ... Now what we are doing is bringing the Mande culture outside of this continent to meet different cultures. We're still griots, but we are griots in different way."

In Bamako, Diabate lives in an unremarkable three-story villa with his wife, four children and dozens more family members. Women cook in the open downstairs. Boys sit on a dirt road out front, winding down lazy days plucking koras on benches.

Diabate has a guest house/rehearsal studio where local musicians and sometimes foreign visitors stay rent-free. He also teaches 40 young kora players at the Mali Conservatory of Music.

"I never want to live outside my country," he says. "I love my country and I love what I do."

Diabate says he taught himself to play because his father, late kora performer Sidiki Diabate, was too busy to teach him.

The younger Diabate, whose own son Sidiki is now also a touring kora performer, is similarly busy. When not on tour in Europe or the U.S., he's constantly taking calls on two cell phones at home, and greeting an endless stream of relatives and friends.

After finishing a show at his club, the Hogon, one Friday at 4 a.m., Diabate was up again a few hours later, performing a quiet duet with his guitarist for the opening of a government building. That night, he played at a staid government dinner, a precursor to a late-night French Embassy gig.

Mali's president frequently calls on the kora star to perform for visiting heads of state.

Diabate says he listens to music to relax. "You can't believe what I'm going to tell you, one of my favorite bands is the Scorpions," he says, referring to the German heavy-metal act. Other influences: AC/DC, Tracy Chapman, banjo-style folk, Celtic music and Indian tunes.

In July, Diabate's 50-man Symmetric Orchestra released "Boulevard de l'Independance", named after the thoroughfare that bisects Bamako's dusty moped-packed streets. The sounds range from Cuban-Senegalese salsa to horn-driven funk, but the kora is at the heart.

Diabate has played variations on the songs for years at Hogon, whose diminutive stage looks more like the porch stoop of a private home than one of Bamako's best live music venues. Twisting to the grooves are Malians in dress-suits and jeans, Tuaregs in flowing blue robes and headdresses, and beer-swigging foreigners.