Ballaké Sissoko (kora) and Debashish Battacharya (Indian slide guitar) – Mali & India

Two string instruments and two musical masters together create melodic inspiration for a musical journey from the banks of the Ganges to the Niger River.

To those who would be advised,

Know that your body is a magnificent drum

Composed of five elements attached to nine resonances

Look after the strings, turn the tuning pegs

And sing a song to God

So that the strings don’t snap and the tuning pegs don’t fall out

Don’t be too attached to this body

As its time on earth is short.

Kabir

Ballaké Sissoko never ceases his exploration of world music, bringing to it the gentle, sensitive sounds of the kora. It is said that the very first kora belonged to a female spirit who lived in the caves at Kansala, now in Gambia.

In the hands of Ballaké Sissoko, the many-stringed kora awakens emotions in us and touches the very deepest, forgotten part of our soul where childhood lies sleeping.

Debashish Bhattacharya

Debashish Bhattacharya is a master of melody and rhythm, and his music has a striking wealth of invention. Based on a deep knowledge of the ragas and composition, he instinctively steers his music towards universality.

Just like the sitar and other lutes, the slide guitars created by Bhattacharya have sympathetic strings that generate a droning to enrich the sound while some serve as support.