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    Foday Musa Suso, 75, Dies; Ambitious Ambassador for West African Music

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    A master of the kora who worked with Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass, his career was powered as much by experimentation as by reverence for tradition.Foday Musa Suso, a griot, kora virtuoso, multi-instrumentalist and composer whose work with artists like Herbie Hancock and Philip Glass helped thrust West African musical traditions into conversation with the world, died on May 25 in his native Gambia. He was 75.The percussionist Stefan Monssen, a mentee of Mr. Suso’s, confirmed the death, in a hospital. He did not specify a cause, but said Mr. Suso had been in ill health in recent years after suffering a stroke.Mr. Suso was born into a long line of griots, the caste of musician-storytellers who are traditionally responsible for retaining oral histories in the areas of West Africa where the Mande languages are spoken. He traced his lineage back to Jeli Madi Wlen Suso, who is said to have invented the kora centuries ago by attaching 21 strings and a cowhide to a large calabash gourd.Mr. Suso was the rare musician who learned to play in the various regional styles of griots from around West Africa. In a tribute published in Gambia’s major newspaper, The Standard, Justice Ebrima Jaiteh of the country’s high court wrote, “Jali Foday was more than a musician, he was a living archive, a teacher, and a symbol of continuity in a rapidly changing world.” (The honorific “Jali” refers to Mr. Suso’s status as a griot.)And yet Mr. Suso’s career was powered as much by his will to expand as by reverence for tradition.He added three bass strings to his kora’s traditional 21, allowing him to hold a steady beat and make its sound more danceable — and therefore more appealing to young listeners in the 1970s.He wrote many of his own compositions. He also learned to play more than a dozen other instruments, including the balafon (an African predecessor of the xylophone), kalimba (also known as the thumb piano), nyanyer (a one-stringed violin-like instrument), ngoni (an early West African banjo) and talking drum. After moving to the United States, he began experimenting with electronic instruments as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jazz at Lincoln Center’s New Season Highlights Ties to Africa

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      From July through June 2026, the new season will showcase works by John Coltrane, the South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and more.Jazz at Lincoln Center’s 38th season will celebrate jazz, Africa and the African diaspora with programs that pay tribute to genre greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis, while others will spotlight vocalists, pianists and other trumpeters. It will also include a tour of Africa by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.The new season opens on July 24 with a preview concert,, “Reflections on Africa,” in the Rose Theater. The program, with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Vincent Gardner as the musical director, offers compositions reflecting the effect of African consciousness on music composed by jazz artists including Coltrane, Randy Weston, Jackie McLean and Horace Parlan.The season continues on Sept. 18 with “Afro!,” a new composition by Wynton Marsalis, the managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which illuminates his meditations on the African continent. It will also feature the vocalist Shenel Johns, the djembe player Weedie Braimah and the drummer Herlin Riley.On Oct. 3-4, Jazz at Lincoln Center will present a 91st birthday retrospective of the 75-year-long career of the Capetown-born pianist and composer Abdullah Ibrahim. (He was known as Dollar Brand when Duke Ellington first heard his trio in 1963 and sponsored his first recording.)On Oct. 24 and Oct. 25, the Orchestra will feature another South African pianist, Nduduzo Makhathini, including a debut of new work that he has composed.Works by Ellington take center stage Jan. 15-17, 2026, with “Duke in Africa.” The music directors for that program will be Chris Lewis and Alexa Tarantino, two of the Orchestra’s newest members.On Feb. 13 and on Valentine’s Day, Dianne Reeves will explore the universal theme of love as she shares songs that highlight rapture, anguish, romance and heartbreak.The Orchestra will feature works by Davis from May 14-16, 2026, in “Sketches of Miles: Miles Davis at 100.” Later that month (May 29-30, 2026), Jazzmeia Horn, the winner of the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz International Vocals Competition, will present a program showcasing her vocal range and improvisation, with the Her Noble Force big band.Etienne Charles, the Trinidad-born trumpeter and composer, will take on Anglophone Afro-Caribbean traditions in “Folklore LIVE Vol. 2” from June 5-6, 2026, in the Appel Room. Later that month, June 12-13, 2026, the Orchestra with Marsalis will also explore the African roots that help make up the genres of Brazil, with “Soul of Brazil,” featuring Hamilton de Holanda and the music of Moacir Santos, in the Rose Theater.The full season is online at jazz.org/25-26. More

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      Toumani Diabaté, Malian Master of the Kora, Is Dead at 58

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      He believed that music could transcend national borders set by colonialism and restore ancient ties, even as it embraced the changes of a globalizing society.Toumani Diabaté, a virtuoso of the kora, a 21-stringed West African instrument, which he often put into dialogue with other musical traditions from around the globe, died on Friday in Bamako, Mali. He was 58.His death, in a hospital, was caused by kidney failure, said his manager, Saul Presa.Born in Mali to a line of griots, or traditional West African musician-historians, that he traced back more than 70 generations, Mr. Diabaté was devoted to celebrating the heritage of Mandé-speaking peoples throughout West Africa, and to sharing that history with the world.“If you think of West Africa as a body, then the griot is the blood,” he told The New York Times in 2006. “We are the guardians of West Africa’s society. We are communicators.”He believed that music could transcend national borders set by colonialism and restore ancient ties, even as it embraced the changes of a globalizing society. That mission inspired him to create his flagship ensemble, the Symmetric Orchestra.“I started building this band to rebuild Manden empire in a cultural way,” he said in a 2011 interview with Uncut magazine, referring to the Mali Empire that once covered the Upper Niger River basin from present-day Mali to Senegal. “The musicians are all from West African, Manden countries. I took the best from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mauretania, and I put them all together.”Mr. Diabaté recorded two duet albums with the Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré. They both won the Grammy Award for best traditional world music album.World CircuitWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      When a Tale of Migration Is Not Just Fiction

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      The two teenagers on the screen trudging through the endless dunes of the Sahara on their way to Europe were actors. So were the fellow migrants tortured in a bloodstained Libyan prison.But to the young man watching the movie one recent evening in a suburb of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, the cinematic ordeal felt all too real. His two brothers had undertaken the same journey years ago.“This is why they refused to send me money to take that route,” said Ahmadou Diallo, 18, a street cleaner. “Because they had seen firsthand how dangerous it is.”Critics in the West have praised the film “Io Capitano” — nominated for the 2024 Academy Award for best international feature film — noting its visceral yet tender look at migration to Europe from Africa. It is now showing in African countries, and is hitting close to home in Senegal. That’s where the two main characters in the movie embark on an odyssey that epitomizes the dreams and hardships of countless more hoping to make it abroad.Last month, the film’s crew and its director, Matteo Garrone, took “Io Capitano” to a dozen places in Senegal where migration isn’t fiction. They screened it in youth centers, in schools, even on a basketball court turned outdoor movie theater in Guédiawaye, a suburb of Dakar, where Mr. Diallo and hundreds of others watched it at sunset on a big screen.Seydou Sarr, left, and Moustapha Fall, who play the lead roles in “Io Capitano,” in Guédiawaye, last month.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Power and Beauty of African Guitar Greats

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      Hear songs by Mdou Moctar, Bombino, Orchestra Baobab and more.Mdou Moctar onstage at Coachella in April.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for CoachellaDear listeners,For today’s Amplifier, your proprietor Lindsay Zoladz graciously lent me the keys for a little tour of Africa to celebrate some of the continent’s guitar greats. It was prompted by my recent profile of Mdou Moctar, the axeman from Niger who has built up a following with a tight band and stunning solos that can sound somewhere between vintage psychedelia and the so-called desert blues — a modern update of the African rhythmic and harmonic traditions that underlie so much popular music in the West, including the blues (and rock, and jazz, and R&B …).But honestly, any excuse is a good one to delve into this music and explore some of the characters behind it. There’s Ali Farka Touré, the Malian poet of the guitar, who learned from exposure to American bluesmen like John Lee Hooker but bristled at the idea that he was anything but an African purist. There’s Orchestra Baobab, whose songs are evidence of how musical styles pingpong around the world and can continue to evolve after returning home. And Oliver Mtukudzi, a force for justice and human rights who put music in service of his message.When I interviewed Moctar, much of our conversation was about politics. His latest album, “Funeral for Justice,” is a take-no-prisoners assault on the legacy of colonialism in Africa, which includes the struggles of the Tuareg, a historically nomadic ethnic group in the Sahara region that are divided by national borders. Political statements are scarce in American pop music these days, but they are a vital part of many of the tracks here, in ways that can be direct or oblique.This playlist is an assortment of some of my favorites, but is by no means meant as an exhaustive list, musically or geographically. If you’re new to this, I hope it can help you get started on a lifetime of exploration.Thanks for listening,BenListen along while you read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aya Nakamura, French-Malian Singer, Is Caught in Olympic Storm

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      In four months, France will host the Paris Olympics, but which France will show up? Torn between tradition and modernity, the country is in the midst of an identity crisis.The possible choice for the opening ceremony of Aya Nakamura, a superstar French-Malian singer whose slang-spiced lyrics stand at some distance from academic French, has ignited a furor tinged with issues of race and linguistic propriety and the politics of immigration. Right-wing critics say Ms. Nakamura’s music does not represent France, and the prospect of her performing has led to a barrage of racist insults online against her. The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation.The outcry has compounded a fight over an official poster unveiled this month: a pastel rendering of the city’s landmarks thronging with people in a busy style reminiscent of the “Where’s Waldo?” children’s books.Right-wing critics have attacked the image as a deliberate dilution of the French nation and its history in a sea of sugary, irreproachable blandness most evident in the removal of the cross atop the golden dome of the Invalides, the former military hospital where Napoleon is buried. An opinion essay in the right-wing Journal du Dimanche said “the malaise of a nation in the throes of deconstruction” was in full view.The rapid immersion of the Olympics in France’s culture wars has its roots in a meeting on Feb. 19 at the Élysée Palace between President Emmanuel Macron and Ms. Nakamura, 28. Mr. Macron, doubling as the artistic director of the Olympics, asked if she would perform.The official poster of the Olympic Games in Paris has been attacked by right-wing critics as a deliberate dilution of the French nation and its history.Thierry Chesnot/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Joel Embiid Wants the African Diaspora to Flourish Onscreen

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      “I’ve always been passionate about storytelling,” said the N.B.A. star, whose production studio will create a documentary about Memphis Depay’s success on the Dutch soccer team.Joel Embiid knew as early as his rookie season in the National Basketball Association that he eventually wanted to enter the media industry.Seven years later, he is now at the pinnacle of the sport — the league’s reigning most valuable player, Embiid set a Philadelphia 76ers record last week by scoring 70 points in a game — and is ready to take on that new challenge.Embiid, 29, who moved from Cameroon to the United States as a teenager, has created a production studio, Miniature Géant, that he hopes will amplify the culture of his home continent. The studio intends to profile athletes and entertainment figures of African descent, with an initial goal of selling content to streaming services.“We’re dabbling in a lot of different spaces, but the common denominator is Africa and the joys and the quest of African people and the African diaspora,” said Sarah Kazadi-Ndoye, who is the studio’s lead creative executive and was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo.Miniature Géant’s first documentary will explore themes of race and identity as it follows Memphis Depay, a Dutch soccer player who was born to a white mother from the Netherlands and a Ghanaian father. The studio is also having exploratory conversations with the Cameroonian mixed martial arts fighter Francis Ngannou, a former Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight champion. In addition to coverage of athletes, the studio hopes to also explore the entertainment world.Embiid is one of several athletes to enter the world of content creation. The basketball player Giannis Antetokounmpo recently announced the start of a production company with the ESPN analyst Jay Williams. The retired National Football League quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning created similar organizations and have released projects with ESPN and Netflix.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      12 African Artists Leading a Culture Renaissance Around the World

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      In one of his famed self-portraits, Omar Victor Diop, a Senegalese photographer and artist, wears a three-piece suit and an extravagant paisley bow tie, preparing to blow a yellow, plastic whistle. The elaborately staged photograph evokes the memory of Frederick Douglass, the one-time fugitive slave who in the 19th century rose to become a leading […] More