Gambie - L'Art De La Kora

Jali Nyama Suso : Kuruntu Kelefa et Kelefabaa

From the Ocora album release "Gambie - L'Art De La Kora" recorded April 1972, Concert Hall, School of Music, University of Washington.

Jali Nyama Suso, The Gambia's legendary kora player, for twenty years well known for his weekly program on Radio Gambia, touring England, France, Sweden, and Germany in the 1980s, died in 1991. In 1971 he recorded the first solo kora album, later re-released as a CD (here), containing three new recordings with Jali Nyama and other musicians in Gambia in 1970.

Suso has probably done more than any other musician to promote the kora/jali tradition outside of Africa. He was a competent kora player by age eight; at 16, a fall cost him a leg, rendering him unable to follow the normal jali existence of traveling around and performing at various ceremonies. He started recording for the radio in 1956 and was a national star by the mid-'60s, even being hired to arrange the national anthem. He worked with American musicologists, leading to a teaching job in the U.S., where he was featured on the Roots soundtrack. In the late '70s, he traveled around Sweden, performing for devoted fans. He contracted tuberculosis in 1986, which eventually led to his death in 1991. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi