Bassekou Kouyaté & Amy Sacko
About the Event
Legendary Malian musician and ngoni master Bassekou Kouyaté tours the UK for the first time as a duo with revered griot singer and exceptional vocalist Amy Sacko, following the release of their debut album Djudjon, L’Oiseau de Garana in 2024.
Bassekou Kouyaté is a legendary musician from Mali and the undisputed master of the ngoni, a traditional, historic small West African instrument somewhere between a banjo and a lute. Kouyaté’s illustrious career now spans four decades and five albums, during which he – and his band Ngoni Ba – have toured the world to critical and commercial acclaim, and has featured collaborations with, amongst many more, Taj Mahal, Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté and Damon Albarn.
In this, his latest project – visiting the UK for the first time – Bassekou performs as a duo with his wife, the revered griot singer and exceptional vocalist Amy Sacko, whose ‘voice of spearing urgency, improbable range’ has ‘a power that jolts like electric shocks’ (The Sydney Morning Herald).
After the release of Djudjon, L’Oiseau de Garana in 2024, their first chart-topping album together as a duo which connects past and present, this will be a unique, intimate and extraordinary opportunity to experience a performance that reaches to the very heart of Mali – deeply personal, expressive, chamber-style, and promising a rare closeness between artists and audience; a space where each note and lyric resonates deeply.
This event will last approximately 90 minutes, including an interval.
The curation of Songlines Encounters is supported by the 1900 Building
Reviews
‘A genius and living proof that the blues comes from Mali’ Taj Mahal on Bassekou Kouyate
‘The Tina Turner of Mali’ MOJO on Amy Sacko