Toumani Diabate forced to cancel Melbourne Festival performance

A HEADLINE act at the Melbourne Festival has been forced to cancel his performance due to a political wrangle.

A HEADLINE act at the Melbourne Festival has been forced to cancel his performance due to a political wrangle between his home country of Mali and its former colonial ruler France.

Toumani Diabate, a kora (a 21-string Malian harp) virtuoso, had been scheduled to travel from Mali to Australia via France - a common route from the African nation - for his festival performance in Melbourne on Thursday night.

But his visa application, which promoters say was lodged in June, had still not been processed earlier this week. Festival organisers rescheduled his concert to Monday in the ultimately vain hope his visa could be expedited.

Arts Projects Australia and the Melbourne Festival say they investigated alternative travel routes, but were told Diabate's passport was being held at Mali's Spanish embassy, where the two-time Grammy Award winner's Schengen visa - now required to travel between Mali and France - remained unprocessed.

A Melbourne Festival spokeswoman said patrons would be entitled to a refund via their relevant ticketing outlets. Refunds would only be available until Monday, October 31.

"The concert was rescheduled in the hope Diabate could make it in time," a Festival official said. "But this, unfortunately, is a political issue.

"We're extremely disappointed this performance will not go ahead, and apologise for the inconvenience."

A spokesman for Arts Projects Australia said the visa process had changed between the time Diabate's flights had been booked and when he was due to depart last week.

"Several months ago when Toumani's flights were booked via Paris (as we usually do for west African artists, previously without incident), this situation did not exist," he said.

Diabate is the world's pre-eminent player of the kora. He was to play with his band in a "cross-cultural collaboration, embracing everything from flamenco, blues, jazz and pop to the irrepressible pulse of West Africa".

Relations between the west African country and France have been described as "ambivalent", rather than close since Mali gained independence in 1960.