Madou Sidiki Diabaté is a 71st generation Kora player from Mali, West Africa. The younger brother of Toumani Diabaté, the world’s first Grammy award winning Kora player, Madou has become one of the world’s greatest living Kora players. Highly respected in Mande society for his profound traditional knowledge and renowned internationally for his dramatic virtuosity, Madou has toured extensively with West Africa’s finest singers, such as Salif Keita, Baaba Maal and Kandia Kouyaté. Musically adventurous, Madou has collaborated with artists such as Damon Albarn, Will Calhoun and Brian Eno, and continues to redefine the role of Kora in the traditional and modern world.
Salif Bamakora, aka Gordon Hellegers, has been playing Kora, the 21-string West African harp, for over 20 years as a perpetual student of Mande Djeli, or Griots, the hereditary keepers of history and knowledge encoded in music. A primary student of Madou Sidiki Diabaté for over 15 years, Salif is deeply versed in the traditional repertoire, histories and cultural practices of Mande Djeliya and has become a skilled and experienced performer in concerts around the world, sharing not only music, but also telling traditional stories and illuminating some of their deeper meanings and significance. As a foundational member of the world music group SIMRIT and periodic collaborator with Estas Tonne, Bamakora also continues to explore the growing edges of contemporary kora music from original composition to spontaneous improvisational concerts.
Kora duets between Madou Sidiki Diabaté and Salif Bamakora endeavor to further develop the growing edges of Mande traditional Kora in the modern age. In pairing 71st generation Kora virtuoso Diabaté with long-time student and collaborator Bamakora, the two explore the endless possibilities of interpretation with original arrangements of the traditional songs of Djeliya. Combined with storytelling of the knowledge and history carried within the music, audiences receive an immersion in the sounds, stories and ancient vitality of the Kora with a deeply relevant message to the global audiences of the present day.