Tune up: Ba Cissoko
Guinean kora master Ba Cissoko and his troupe are all musicians with feet firmly grounded in age-old traditions and eyes steadfastly fixed on new musical horizons. Cissoko was born in 1967 in Guinea Bissau to the famous musician Kandara Cissoko, one of the founders of the Ballet Djoliba, a Guinean dance troupe who put the music of their country on the world map. After moving across the border to Guinea Conakry in 1989, Cissoko began to hone his kora playing skills with M'bady Kouyaté, partriach of the Kouyaté clan, and one of the great griots of West Africa's Manding culture.
Cissoko found a natural affinity and empathy who two of M'Bady 's sons, Kourou and Sékou, who now play bass, kora and electric kora in his group. It was this trio who blew up a storm at the international MASA trade fair in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 1998, and later came to France to work with the famed Congolese producer Ray Lema. Now supplemented by the vibrant young talent of percussionist, Ibrahim Bah, a Conakry street child barely out of his teens who spent his youth playing djembe on the beaches of the capital city, Cissoko and band blend together the ancient and delicately entrancing sound of the kora with a well built reggae rock foundation.
Their sound is as solid as the roots of one of West Africa's huge baobab trees, and as fresh a sea breeze that wafts ashore from the Atlantic to clear out the polluted arteries of downtown Conakry.
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