Seckou Keita

Seckou Keita (born 14 February 1978) is a kora player and drummer from Senegal. He is one of the few champions of the lesser-known kora repertoire from Casamance in southern Senegal.

Musical career Keita was born in Ziguinchor, Senegal. Through his father he is a descendant of the Malian Keita family of kings, and his mother's family, the Cissokhos, are a griot family (hereditary musicians). He launched his international career in 1996 under the guidance of his uncle Solo Cissokho with appearances at Norway's Forde Festival in a successful collaboration with Cuban, Indian and Scandinavian musicians.

In 2003, interested in seeing how much further he could push his kora playing, he asked his cousin Aliou Gassama to create a double-necked kora for him, which he uses for performances and some recordings.

Additionally, Keita has been constructive in making the kora more accessible outside the traditional griot families. Initially, he was considering the value of having a physical record of his music, and how that would help his children to learn the kora and its music without being part of the upbringing he had had, and using sources more familiar to them while growing up in the UK. Historically, only griots would learn the kora from family members by listening and repetition, so with the assistance of Latin jazz pianist, composer and producer Alex Wilson, Keita worked on deconstructing the kora and its outputs so that it could be transcribed and adapted for Western instruments. Eight books of kora music adapted for the piano, flute, cello, violin and clarinet were launched in 2020 and are available for sale from his website. Prior to their release, the world premiere of the transcriptions was performed by Sinfonia Cymru musicians Abel Selaocoe (cello) and Helen Wilson (flute), award-winning jazz pianist Zoe Rahman and Paul Moylan (double bass) in a twilight concert at the Howard Assembly Room at Opera North, Leeds, in January 2019.

Collaborations Seckou Keita performing at the Draig Beats festival, Treborth Botanic Garden, Bangor, Wales, 9 June 2018, playing his specially made double-necked kora. Throughout his career, Keita has collaborated with other artists, including musicians with different backgrounds; a 2010 review described Keita's work as "Witnessing Keita you are assured that his many collaborations have fed and extended rather than diluted the African main spring of his music"; Keita has said “Everything in music has to be honest, and the deeper meanings of the songs and melodies must be preserved. This is why it’s important that collaborations should be right for the music, and there are connections between, say, Cuban and Indian sounds and the repertoire of the kora that can be explored without losing the distinct flavours of the different traditions and styles”. which was described by Robin Denselow of The Guardian as "one of the classic concerts of the year." Their subsequent albums Clychau Dibon in 2013 and Soar in 2018 won numerous awards, and saw Keita's development as a vocalist. They have continued to collaborate, with an upcoming album planned, and recent performances in 2021 include The Proms, the Brighton Festival and the London Jazz Festival, and a performance in Liverpool with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic.

In 2012, Keita met Omar Sosa, an acclaimed Cuban jazz pianist, and their debut album Transparent Water, featuring Gustavo Ovalles, was released in 2017, followed by SUBA on 22 October 2021, accompanied by a nationwide tour of England and Wales. Transparent Water was hailed by Songlines as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ and by World Music Central as ‘mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated.'

In 2019, Keita joined the AKA Trio, "an international musical summit meeting of three world-renowned virtuosos: Antonio Forcione, Seckou Keita and Adriano Adewale"; Forcione is an Italian guitarist-composer while Adewale is a Brazilian percussionist. Their album JOY was released in May 2019, alongside a major UK tour which included the Brighton Festival.

Also in 2019, Keita was part of Spell Songs, which brought together folk musicians, and the artwork and text of Robert McFarlane's and Jackie Morris's children's book The Lost Words: A Spell Book; performances included the Hay International Literary Festival, with a followup concert hall tour planned for early 2022.

In 2020, Keita sought to explore how the traditional role of a griot could address a global tragedy such as the COVID-19 pandemic, so he reached out to other artists and friends, and their contributions resulted in the release of Now Or Never, a charity single to support the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in July 2020, which featured artists from across Africa, Scotland, India, Cuba and Japan, including Fatoumata Diawara (Mali), Noura Mint Seymali (Mauritania), Kris Drever (Scotland), Anandi Bhattacharya (India), Zule Guerra (Cuba) and Mieko Miyazaki (Japan). All proceeds from Now Or Never go to the ICRC for its global response to COVID-19. explaining that he's "collaborated a lot in the West, but not enough in the land of Africa, so that’s where my focus is at the moment." The first of these collaborations was with Aida Samb, a Senegalese singer and performer, with their single Elles Sont Toutes Belles released in February 2021; he has since released Homeland on 21 June 2021 which features the renowned Senegalese vocalist Baaba Maal.

In April 2022, Seckou Keita was co-nominated for two Songlines Awards for his collaborations with Sosa and Spell Songs.

Awards, nominations and achievements

1998: Honorary mention in the International Songwriting Competition – Instrumental Category 2001: Nomination for the BBC Radio 3 World Music Awards – Audience choice 2010: Silimbo Passage, No.1 in the iTunes World Music Chart 2012: Miro, No.1 in the European World Music Chart 2013: Clychau Dibon fRoots Critics Poll Album of the Year 2014: Clychau Dibon No.1 in the Amazon World Music Chart 2014: Clychau Dibon Top Ten World Albums - MOJO Magazine 2014: BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards - nominees Best Duo and Best Traditional Track (for Les Bras De Mer) with Catrin Finch 2014: Best Cross Cultural Collaboration with Catrin Finch - Songlines Magazine 2015: 22 Strings voted as one of Sing Out!’s Top Ten Albums for 2015 2015: 22 Strings Runner-Up for Best Packaged CD in the fRoots Awards 2015 2016: 22 Strings Nominated for Best Artist - Africa & Middle East Category - Songlines Music Awards 2016: 22 Strings Winner Best Album - Africa and Middle East Category - Songlines Music Awards 2018: SOAR is Number one in the Transglobal World Music Charts for June 2018 2018: SOAR is nominated for the Welsh Music Prize 2018. 2018: SOAR wins Best Transregional Album 2018 in the Transglobal World Music Chart Awards 2018: SOAR wins Songlines Magazine Best Fusion Album 2018 2018: SOAR wins fRoots Critics Poll Album of the Year 2018 2019: Catrin Finch and Seckou Keita win 'Best Duo/Band' in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2019 2019: Seckou Keita wins 'Musician Of The Year' in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards 2019 2022: Songlines Awards nominations for Spell Songs (Europe category) and SUBA with Omar Sosa (Fusion category)

Discography Albums

2000: Seckou Keita - Baiyo (Orphan), later reissued as Mali 2001: EtE (Seckou Keita, Martin Cradick, Nii Tagoe) - EtE 2003: Jalikunda Cissokho - Lindianeafter 2006: Seckou Keita Quartet - Tama Silo: Afro Mandinka Soul 2008: Seckou Keita Quartet - Silimbo Passage 2012: Seckou Keita - Miro 2013: Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita - Clychau Dibon 2014: Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita - Gobiath 2015: Seckou Keita - 22 Strings 2017: Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita - Transparent Water 2018: Catrin Finch & Seckou Keita - SOAR 2019: AKA Trio - Joy 2021: Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita - SUBA 2023: Seckou Keita with BBC Concert Orchestra – African Rhapsodies, Arrangements by Davide Mantovani, Cond. Mark Heron. With Abel Selaocoe et al.

Singles 2020: Seckou Keita & Friends - Now or Never 2021: Seckou Keita featuring Aida Samb - Elles Sont Toutes Belles 2021: Seckou Keita featuring Baaba Maal - Homeland

Charitable work

In November 2010, Keita launched a partnership with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). He will donate 50% of the proceeds made from sales of his CD, The Silimbo Passage, over six months, to support the ICRC's work to protect and assist victims of war and other situations of violence. Keita chose the ICRC because he had come into contact with the humanitarian organization when he was a child in the Casamance (a region that has been affected by armed violence for the last 30 years). “The International Red Cross sparks memories from my youth. I didn't know what they were about but I knew they were doing good things,” he says.

In August 2020, he sought contributions from musicians around the world to produce a charity single, Now Or Never, to support the ICRC's global response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Personal life Keita moved to the UK in 1999 and currently lives in Sneinton, England. Keita is the elder brother of kora player Suntou Susso.