Ousseynou Kouyate was a member of the National Ballet of Senegal for seven years before moving to Berkeley with his twin brother Assane and starting…
Artist Profiles: Ousseynou Kouyate
Tag: kora
Kora Delight
Dawda Jobarteh – Transitional Times (Sterns Music, 2016) All too often kora music evokes the image of lacy traditional African tunes that fall into the…
Malian Kora Maestro Toumani Diabate
Toumani Diabate was one of the most brilliant players of the kora (a 21-string harp-lute from West Africa). He was born in 1965 in Bamako…
Artist Profiles: Mamadou Diabate (kora)
Mamadou Diabaté was born in 1975 in Kita, a Malian city long known as a center for the arts and culture of the Manding people…
Artist Profiles: Madou Sidiki Diabate
Madou Sidiki Diabate presents a night of traditional West African music that dates back centuries. While relatives – his famous older brother Toumani Diabate and…
Artist Profiles: Pa Bobo Jobarteh
The great Gambian singer and kora player Pa Bobo Jobarteh rose to international attention when he was invited to perform at the WOMAD (World Music…
Songhai Revisited at WOMAD 2016
Songhai, the iconic 1988 collaboration between Malian kora master Toumani Diabate, double bass virtuoso Danny Thompson and the young Madrid flamenco group Ketama will…
Kora Trailblazer Sona Jobarteh to Perform at Africa Oyé 2016
Sona Jobarteh, the first female Kora virtuoso to come from a West African Griot family, is set to perform on June 18 at Africa Oyé…
Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate’s Pleasurable Ride
Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate – Monistic Theory (Cumbancha, 2016) It struck me at the time of their first recording Faya (2014) that you couldn’t…
Drawing the African Line
Call me a traditionalist, call me a purist, call me a snob, call me a journalistic hack. (Okay, that last one is kind of beside…