Bassekou Kouyate knows exactly what his place is in this world, and he knows where he came from and where he wants to go. That existence is inseparable from the instrument he plays, the ngoni. It is ...

Bassekou Kouyate is revitalizing the music of Africa from within. For decades the core of most bands on the continent has been electric bass, guitar, and drum kit, but Kouyate may be turning that ...

Bassekou Kouyate is a musical wizard and one of Africa's most innovative bandleaders. He plays the ngoni, the traditional lute from Mali that dates back hundreds of years and is the musical forebear ...

Get Access To Every Broadway Story Unlock access to every one of the hundreds of articles published daily on BroadwayWorld by logging in with one click. Bassekou Kouyate is a master of the ngoni, an ...

Malian ngoni player Bassekou Kouyate and his band, Ngoni Ba's third album continues the increasingly outward-looking trajectory of its predecessors. The debut, the lovely Segu Blue (Out/Here, 2007), ...

For Balla Kouyaté, the balafon has always been more than just an instrument. A West African antecedent of the xylophone, it’s been in his family for 800 years, dating back so far that history blends ...

Bassekou Kouyate is a griot, meaning that he’s part of an ancient, hereditary caste responsible for maintaining a body of songs and stories that have been passed down for generations. In precolonial ...

As a boy in Mali, Balla Kouyaté remembers playing the balafon to motivate workers on a farm. He was so small, he had to stand on a large rock to be seen by the crowd. An opportunity like that would ...

Andra Kouyate has invented, designed and built a new instrument; the bass ngoni, sort of an African contrabass. This invention has permitted him to develop a new way of playing, quite different from ...

When Joe Driscoll and Sekou Kouyate met at a music festival two years ago, they did not even speak a common language, but their musical connection was instant. Music reviewer Banning Eyre says their ...

Bassekou Kouyate tells Mark Hudson that there was fighting in the street as he went into the recording studio to make his latest album. Street-corner philosopher: Bassekou Kouyate in the recording ...

If you’re the kind of music lover who routinely stalks high-profile national acts at Higher Ground, or even if you favor smaller singer-songwriter spotlights at Radio Bean, you might think the musical ...