BBC - Radio 3 - Awards for World Music 2005

BA CISSOKO (GUINEA)

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. They have managed to create a brand new sound which has rare cross-generational appeal back home in their native Guinea. The old people love it because it reveres the venerable tradtions of the griot and the kora. The youth love it because it twists and moulds that tradition into enticing new forms.

Ba Cissoko was born in 1967 in Guinea Bissao 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 Kouyate, partriach of the Kouyate 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 Sekou, 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.

A debut album "Sabolan", out on the new French label Marabi, was one of the most eagerly awaited platters of 2004. The interplay of Ba Cissoko's traditional kora and Sekou Kouyate's souped up revved up and sonically enhanced kora is core of Ba Cissoko's radical appeal. Their sound is a solid as the roots of one of west Africa's huge baobab trees, and as fresh a sea breeze which wafts ashore from the Atlantic to clear out the polluted arteries of downtown Conakry.

Ivan Chrysler (courtesy of fRoots)

Full concert audio from WOMAD 2004

Your Comments

Svein A, Norway
The performance at Roskilde 2006 was great! The coras were lovely, and the percussionist really is a gift from heaven.

Angelique, Sydney Australia
I love this album! I've been a fan of the kora for years and no one has taken it to this level. Ba's voice is like honey and compliments the amazing renditions of traditional songs and his own fresh ones. I can't stop listening to it.

Grant, Winnipeg Canada
Fantastic main stage set at the 2005 Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Anne, Oregon, USA
Sadly over-hyped and overrated; there is more complex, interesting kora music around. Weak vocals, too.
Bill - Phoenix, AZ
Addictive, Jazz riffs, Reggae plus throw in Hendrix. Tracks 4 and 9 are a complete meditation.

An African in New York
absolutely fantastic