The strings of West Africa sing generously on two new recordings by acknowledged masters of the guitar, the harp-like kora and the lute-like ngoni. Their sounds might seem reserved, even foreign, to ...

These days the genre of desert blues boasts one of the most vibrant music movements around the world. The bands and musicians that are part of this genre come from an area that is spread across ...

If you’ve played with blues legend Taj Mahal, gigged with oft-out-there trombonist Roswell Rudd, added sounds to Björk’s Volta, and collaborated on a Grammy-winning recording with Ali Farka Touré, ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Diabaté’s legacy as a 71st-generation kora player was indebted to traditional applications of the classical instrument—including ...

NOVATO, CALIF. — The lush, affluent hills of Marin County provide a stark counterpoint to the dry expanse of Mali, the landlocked West African nation as rich in music as it is poor in resources. But ...

Toumani Diabate is acknowledged to be the foremost kora player in the world. The kora is a 21-string harp-lute instrument that has been played in Africa for centuries. It was the signature of the ...

Vieux Farka Touré‘s show at The Haunt April 11 [in Ithaca] turned Sunday into anything but lazy. The Malian guitarist and singer — son of famed guitarist Ali Farka Touré — and his excellent outfit ...

When Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Touré won a Grammy for his 1994 collaboration with Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, his reputation as the “African John Lee Hooker” spread worldwide. But Touré ...

SOAS, University of London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. The untimely death of Mali’s Toumani Diabaté at the age of 58 has shocked the music world. The sheer number of tributes, ...

Toumani Diabaté, the Malian musician and master of West African traditional harp the kora, died last Friday, July 19 at a hospital in Bamako, Mali, from kidney failure. He was 58. His manager ...