With her shimmering 21-string kora melodies and distinctive voice, Sona Jobarteh is \u201ca griot for a new generation of West Africans\u201d (BBC). Breaking from a seven-century-old tradition that reserved the instrument for males of a hereditary musical family, Jobarteh is not only the very first female kora virtuoso, but also a deft innovator who \u201cblends traditional music, blues, and Afropop to impressive effect\u201d (The Guardian). Along with selling out venues like the Barbican in London and La Seine Musicale in Paris, she is also a leading activist for social change and education reform in Africa, delivering potent speeches to the UN, the WTO, and UNICEF, and founding The Gambia Academy.<\/p>\n
\u201cA master of blues and folk styles on guitar, banjo, and harmonica, and a commanding singer with a raw, immediately recognizable baritone\u201d (The New York Times), Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist Taj Mahal is a legendary figure in the blues and roots music. A brilliant artist with a musicologist\u2019s mind, he is a hero to rock-and-roll icons such as Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones, who has collaborated with Sona Jobarteh, Toumani Diabat\u00e9, and Keb’ Mo’, among many others. \u201cThe blues is bigger than most people think,\u201d he says. \u201cYou could hear Mozart play the blues. It might be more like a lament. It might be more melancholy. But I\u2019m going to tell you: the blues is in there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With her shimmering 21-string kora melodies and distinctive voice, Sona Jobarteh is \u201ca griot for a new generation of West Africans\u201d (BBC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"tags":[],"tribe_events_cat":[5563],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/99877"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/99877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99879,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/99877\/revisions\/99879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99877"},{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=99877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}