Monday 8 August 2011

Seckou Keita Quartet

The Seckou Keita Quartet (now the Seckou Keita Quintet) was recommended to me by iTunes while I was researching kora music and I thought I should share the band's music with you because it involves an irresistable mixture of Western and Senegalese music.

Seckou Keita uses jazz, classical and flamenco music in his music and sometimes he combines his music with some rock and reggae music. The Seckou Keita Quintet also combines many different sorts of music because Davide Mantovani is an Italian bass player, Surahata Susso is a Gambian percussionist, Samy Bishai is an Egyptian violinist and Binta Suso is a Gambian singer. Seckou Keita makes the band's music even more original by combining the distinct tunings of the kora, which are linked to the different parts of Senegal, Gambia, Mali and Guinea-Bissau, into one kora.


If you'd like to listen to more samples of the quartet's album, here's the link to their mp3 album on Amazon: Afro-Mandinka Soul.

This is the link to Seckou Keita's solo mp3 album on Amazon: The Silimbo Passage.
This is the link to his other solo album on Amazon but Amazon America doesn't appear to sell it in mp3 format: Mali.

2 comments:

  1. Seckou Keita also a respected djembe player. he's teaching in Dublin in a few weeks. won't make the workshop myself, unfortunately. If you're looking into any more West African stuff, I can give you a good few recommendations..

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  2. Oh yes I read about that! Sadly I can't make those kind of workshops either since I live in the countryside! But yes suggestions of West African artists would be greatly appreciated, so thank you in advance :)!

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