I spend 3 month in Senegal, in four different regions along the cost from February to May 2022. My first stop was "l'école des sables" founded by Germaine Acogny in Toubab Dialaw, where I met and worked with a lot of great dancers, choreographers and musicians like Ndeye Seck, Richard Adossou and Saky Bertrand, just to name a few. After that I continued my music research in the region Casamance, the capital Dakar and St. Louis. I played different traditional senegalese music and learned a lot about rhythms and west africain dances. In Senegal the typical instrumentation is called Sabar. Except for the Casamance, the region between Gambia and Guinea-Bissau in the south of Senegal, the traditional music is generally instrumented with Seourouba drums. In Dakar, I was looking forward to working with Samba Cissokho on the kora. We recorded some of his songs with him as a duo and as a trio with Ousmane Ba on the peule flute. Samba comes from the well-known Cissokho griot family, from which famous kora players such as Ablaye Cissokho, Lamine Cissokho, Solo Cissokho and Diali Cissokho have emerged, to name but a few. It was such a journey to learn so much about music and to play so very different traditional west africain styles. The senegalese music culture is very rich, virtuoso and so challenging as well.

Cissokho/Lapp Duo - Kora and Ukulele Bass

Dakar - Centre d’Oxygène de Pikine

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