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Ba Cissoko is a Guinean world music band featuring five members, two of whom play the traditional Kora harp. Two band members play percussion instruments and one plays bass. The sound of the band has been described as "West Africa meets Jimi Hendrix". [1]
The band is named after the lead singer and electronic Kora player, Ba Cissoko, the nephew of the kora maestro M'Bady Kouyaté. Band members include Sekou Kouyaté also on kora, and bass player Kourou Kouyaté, both Ba Cissoko's younger cousins. [2]
Ba Cissoko was created in 1999 with just three members. The last member is featured on the album release from 2009 called Séno. The band toured the UK supporting acclaimed Nigerian musician Femi Kuti in 2007. Albums named Nimissa (2012) and Djeli (2016) followed.
Sekou Kouyaté can with his electronically enhanced Kora harp produce a sound somewhat similar to that of fast guitar tapping, partly helped by the nature of the instrument. The new sound has earned Sekou the nickname of "Jimi Hendrix Africain", due to Jimi Hendrix style riffs.
Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the mid-20th century. It de-emphasizes melody and chord progressions and focuses on a strong rhythmic groove of a bassline played by an electric bassist and a drum part played by a percussionist, often at slower tempos than other popular music. Funk typically consists of a complex percussive groove with rhythm instruments playing interlocking grooves that create a "hypnotic" and "danceable" feel. Funk uses the same richly colored extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths and thirteenths.
The kora is a stringed instrument used extensively in West Africa. A kora typically has 22 strings, which are played by plucking with the fingers. It combines features of the lute and harp.
In music performances, rhythm guitar is a technique and role that performs a combination of two functions: to provide all or part of the rhythmic pulse in conjunction with other instruments from the rhythm section ; and to provide all or part of the harmony, i.e. the chords from a song's chord progression, where a chord is a group of notes played together. Therefore, the basic technique of rhythm guitar is to hold down a series of chords with the fretting hand while strumming or fingerpicking rhythmically with the other hand. More developed rhythm techniques include arpeggios, damping, riffs, chord solos, and complex strums.
The balafon is a gourd-resonated xylophone, a type of struck idiophone. It is closely associated with the neighbouring Mandé, Senoufo and Gur peoples of West Africa, particularly the Guinean branch of the Mandinka ethnic group, but is now found across West Africa from Guinea to Mali. Its common name, balafon, is likely a European coinage combining its Mandinka name bala with the word fôn 'to speak' or the Greek root phono.
David Noel Redding was an English rock musician, best known as the bass player for the Jimi Hendrix Experience and guitarist/singer for Fat Mattress.
Guinea is a West African nation, composed of several ethnic groups. Among its most widely known musicians is Mory Kanté - 10 Cola Nuts saw major mainstream success in both Guinea and Mali while "Yeke Yeke", a single from Mory Kanté à Paris, was a European success in 1988.
A griot is a West African historian, storyteller, praise singer, poet, or musician. The griot is a repository of oral tradition and is often seen as a leader due to their position as an advisor to royal personages. As a result of the former of these two functions, they are sometimes called a bard.
Edwin H. Kramer is a British recording producer and engineer. He has collaborated with several artists now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, the Kinks, Kiss, John Mellencamp, and Carlos Santana, as well as records for other well-known artists in various genres, including Anthrax, Joe Cocker, Loudness, Peter Frampton, John Mayall, Ten Years After, Mott the Hoople, John Sebastian, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick, Small Faces, Sir Lord Baltimore and Whitesnake.
Axis: Bold as Love is the second studio album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Track Records first released it in the United Kingdom on December 1, 1967, only seven months after the release of the group's highly successful debut, Are You Experienced. In the United States, Reprise Records delayed the release until the following month. The album reached the top ten in the album charts in both countries.
The Gravikord is a 24 string electric double bridge-harp invented by Robert Grawi in 1984, which is closely related to both the West African kora and the mbira. It was designed to employ a separated double tonal array structure making it possible to easily play cross-rhythms in a polyrhythmic musical style in a modern electro-acoustic instrument. The Gravi-kora is a similar instrument, also developed by Grawi, which is tuned identically to a traditional 21 string kora.
N'Faly Kouyate is a Guinean musician. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group of West Africa. His father was the griot Konkoba Kabinet Kouyate, who lived in Siguiri, Guinea.
Foday Musa Suso is a Gambian musician and composer. He is a member of the Mandinka ethnic group, and is a griot. Griots are the oral historians and musicians of the Mandingo people who live in several west African nations. Griots are a living library for the community providing history, entertainment, and wisdom while playing and singing their songs. It is an extensive verbal and musical heritage that can only be passed down within a griot family.
Sona Jobarteh is a British multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer with Gambian roots. She is from one of the five principal kora-playing griot families of West Africa, and is the first female professional kora player to come from a griot family. She is the cousin of the celebrated kora player Toumani Diabate, and is the sister of the diaspora kora player Tunde Jegede.
The ngoni is a string instrument, traditional West African guitar. Its body is made of wood or calabash with dried animal skin head stretched over it. The ngoni, which can produce fast melodies, appears to be closely related to the akonting and the xalam. This is called a jeli ngoni as it is played by griots at celebrations and special occasions in traditional songs called fasas in Mandingo. Another larger type, believed to have originated among the donso is called the donso ngoni. This is still largely reserved for ceremonial purposes. The donso ngoni, or "hunter's harp," has six strings. It is often accompanies singing along with the karagnan, a serrated metal tube scraped with a metal stick. The donso ngoni was mentioned by Richard Jobson in the 1620s, describing it as the most commonly used instrument in the Gambia. He described it as an instrument with a great gourd for a belly at the bottom of a long neck with six strings.
Songhai was a world music collaboration between the Spanish flamenco group Ketama, Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté, and English bass player Danny Thompson. They released two albums, Songhai (1988) and Songhai 2 (1994), both co-produced by Joe Boyd.
Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté is a prominent Mandé kora player and jeli from Bamako, Mali. He is the 71st generation of kora players in his family and a son to Sidiki Diabaté.
Kora Jazz Trio is a three piece African musical group, founded in 2002 by Djeli Moussa Diawara, Guinean Korafola, with Abdoulaye Diabate and Moussa Sissokho, best known for producing a music that is a mix of American jazz with traditional African music. Described as "the encounter between mandinga musical tradition and the freedom of jazz, between West African percussion and Afro-American swing", they have been recognized for their focus on sharing their cultural heritage, without doing so for the sake of mainstream success or in an effort to create a movement.
Red Earth is a 2007 studio album by Dee Dee Bridgewater. It carries the subtitle "A Malian Journey" to celebrate and explore her African and Malian ancestry. The album brought her the seventh nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album at the 2008 Grammy Awards. On Billboard's Top Jazz Album chart it reached Number 16.
A rock band or pop band is a small musical ensemble that performs rock music, pop music, or a related genre. A four-piece band is the most common configuration in rock and pop music. In the early years, the configuration was typically two guitarists, a bassist, and a drummer. Another common formation is a vocalist who does not play an instrument, electric guitarist, bass guitarist, and a drummer. Instrumentally, these bands can be considered as trios. Sometimes, in addition to electric guitars, electric bass, and drums, also a keyboardist plays.
Malicool is an album by American trombonist Roswell Rudd and Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté. It was recorded in January 2001 at Studio Bogolan in Bamako, Mali, and was released by Sunnyside Records in 2002. On the album Rudd and Diabaté are joined by balaphone player Lassana Diabate, ngone player Bassekou Kouyate, guitarist Sayon Sissoko, bassist Henry Schroy, djembe player Sekou Diabate, and vocalists Mamadou Kouyate and Dala Diabate.
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