On Saturday, May 6 and Sunday, May 7 2023, we have a rare opportunity to experience live in concert two giants of music: Cuban pianist and composer, Omar Sosa, and Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita. They will be joined by Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. These concerts, presented by Nuits d’Afrique Productions will take place at Le National in Montréal. Opening act will be Romain Malagnoux (France, Québec).

Omar Sosa has made a name for himself as a leading figure in modern jazz. He has won multiple Grammy awards and has been praised for his ability to combine traditional Latin rhythms with contemporary jazz. Seckou Keita is considered one of the greatest kora players in the world today. The kora is a traditional West African stringed instrument that is central to the griot musical tradition. Gustavo Ovalles is a master percussionist who plays the polyrhythmic sound of the African Diaspora.

Sosa and Keita first met in 2012, when they were both performing at a music festival in England. They hit it off immediately and decided to collaborate on an album together. The resulting album, Transparent Water, was released in 2017 and was met with critical acclaim. It featured Sosa on piano and various percussion instruments, while Keita played the kora and other West African instruments.

In a conversation with Sosa and Keita they expressed their excitement for having the opportunity to present their music in Montréal. It’s the first time they perform together in this multi-cultural city, well recognized for being an important focus of artistic creation in Canada.

Omar Sosa considers the recording of SUBA as a beautiful project, which was born during the time of Covid-19. “During the first lockdown I got a phone call from Seckou, and he suggested we should work on a new album. We had released our first recording, Transparent Water in 2017. I embraced the idea and we agreed to start working on creating the conditions to make this happen. We would work in our own homes and then make sure we could travel and meet up in Europe. From the very beginning we talked about following a philosophy that would involve space, silence and peace. All of a sudden, Covid had brought the world to a standstill, it created this strange atmosphere of peacefulness in the middle of the chaos, and we thought we should reflect this new reality in our project. SUBA -which means sunrise in Mandinka language- is for us a big statement, where another world is possible. SUBA for us is like a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of tolerance and change in a postpandemic world, it’s a reiteration of humanity’s eternal need for peace, hope and unity.”

Having watched in YouTube Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita and Gustavo Ovalles in a recorded concert in New York, and experiencing the magic created on stage by these musicians, I had to ask Omar about what we should expect during the concerts in Montréal, and this was his answer: “For us, a concert is a ceremony, it’s a moment of collective communion. We take every concert we give as if it was our first and last. We give it all, we project all the energy we have inside in our music, we don’t hold anything. And that creates a community with the audience, a spiritual connection.”

I also asked Sosa to expand on something he has said before: “The one thing that Africa can teach the world is the spirituality in every single thing.” This is what he had to say: “When people start getting close to Africa they realize there’s another way of connecting with your inner self. Why? because you give a more important role to your spiritual dimension as a human being. Unfortunately, many people in western society stopped having that connection with what we call The Supreme Force, or what others may call The Cosmic Energy, our ancestors, who perhaps are not even part of our genealogical tree, but they are with us. So, we need to start listening to our ancestors in order to reconnect with our inner voice, to get guidance and balance to continue our journey on this planet.”

Finally, I asked Omar to tell me about his work Gustavo Ovalles. He said: “I’ve been working with Gustavo for more than 20 years, and from the very beginning we had a strong connection. He’s an amazing musician. I met him in Paris, he came one day to rehearse with my band before a concert. I asked him to sit with my drummer and play together for a few minutes and that was it. I asked him to join us that evening and the chemistry during the concert was incredible. It was a beautiful show that day, and it continues to be like that after all these years.”

After talking to Omar Sosa, I had a chance to talk briefly with Seckou Keita, and asked him to talk about the energy, the connection, the magic that happens when him, Omar and Gustavo get in front of an audience during a live concert, and especially after the terrible experience lived during the pandemic, and he said that “it is something incredible and that energy is hard to describe sometimes, to express it with words. There are elements that we do share… Omar and I have recorded, have been travelling the world, performing on many stages for a number of years now, and also with Gustavo. When you play music that is for the soul, that music speaks for itself. And when musicians meet on the stage with open minds, and wanting to share their energies, everything flows easily, that’s usually what happens. And everywhere we go, and every different place where we play it’s a different energy, but always at about the same level or above, never under. It’s about the music we create together, the chemistry we have listening to each other that allows the music to peaks by itself, to shine. We are so much looking forward coming back to Montréal and play these two shows. It’s gonna be a high energy event. I have an amazing experience performing in Montréal, the first time in 2006 I came with my quartet. We played at the Jazz Festival and I was so touched about how the public engaged with my music, it was overwhelming. And I have to say that I will be back in Montréal next July, for the 37th edition of the Nuits d’Afrique International Festival. I will be performing at the Gesù on July 16 as a solo artist.”

One of the things that makes Sosa, Keita and Ovalles’s collaboration so special is the way in which they are able to blend different musical traditions together seamlessly. They are incredibly versatile and able to move between different genres and styles without missing a beat. Another thing that makes their collaboration so special is the way in which they showcase each other’s talents. Sosa’s piano playing is nothing short of breathtaking, and he is able to create a wide range of sounds and textures with his instrument. Keita, meanwhile, is a master of the kora and is able to coax a seemingly endless range of sounds and melodies out of his instrument. Ovalle is a master percussionist who comes from the Afro-Venezuelan, Latin and Caribbean tradition. Together, they form a musical symbiosis that is truly awe-inspiring.

SUBA is a fusion of different musical styles, but this time the album is more focused on Latin and African rhythms, another masterful collaboration between two masters. The recording is characterized by its energetic rhythms and high-energy performances.

Omar Sosa and Seckou Keita are two musicians who have created a sound that is both innovative and captivating. Their collaboration is a testament to the power of cross-cultural exchange, and it demonstrates the incredible creativity that can emerge when different artists and traditions come together.

_{YouTube Video – Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita: Allah Léno}

I rarely conduct interviews using email and don’t really like doing them over the telephone either. In my view, the talking and listening – more listening than talking, as I prefer it to be – is best done in person, and preferably in a quiet space where I can savour (I use the gastronomic term, “savour”, because it suggests a rather visceral experience), in this case the sound of the words; the way they are intoned gives them a particular colour and texture. They are alive, these words spoken by the person with whom I speak. Alphabets strung together and which ring and resonate making a particular luxurious sound, echoing in this quiet space have more meaning; accented vowels and diphthongs that are formed by the curl of the lips, blushing purple and rushing to meet the wind between her and I sitting close together from music not only to my ears but seem to float their ghostly visages across my eyes. I get so ravenously hungry in situations like this that I devour each word, each phrase and sentence as if I were receiving Holy Communion itself. And so hot are these to the touch of my skin that they burn themselves in the memory.

Rarely, if at all, such incredible magic takes place over the telephone. And when it does happen, I am left breathless as I was when I spoke to the great musician and guitarist Berta Rojas in Paraguay twice over a month and a half. Although she was thousands of miles away, I ‘saw’ her lips part into a perfect, radiant smile. And when she spoke to me it was as if she ‘sang’ her lines; now bubbling as if cascading through laughter, now sombre as if muffled by the ache of a memory, twisting in the gut, now wistful and blurred as if spoken through the translucency of tears; and no matter what, always spoken as if grateful to be alive and present with me – in this case, no matter how separate we may have been, in a place, in space where it felt that if we reached out, we could touch each other and hold hands through shared pain and joy. Berta Rojas is a special person; she has as have I, come face to face with death and been blessed instead by the grace of God smiling as He sent her back from the dead to play music again, and again for a world scorched by fire and drenched by rain. He sent me back too. And I write now not only giving thanks for having my life given back to me (twice), but so that I could not only speak to Berta Rojas but live to write about it too.

Berta Rojas speaks in words adorned with syllables that are redolent of the aroma of frankincense burning quietly somewhere, floating towards the guitar strings that she is plucking with the tips of nails of long, slender fingers, urging them to conjure images of Paraguay, Argentina and Brasil. The music that ensues echoes in between my ears like notes cut in high-fidelity, into a vinyl which spins around and around occasionally accompanied by the strings of an enormous, well-drilled orchestra. The words playback again and again when I listen to Felicidade, a grand work of art made up of the music of Brasil. The song is “Berimbau” by the great Brasilian guitarist Baden-Powell, to whom Miss Rojas is paying homage here, with Toquinho and the wonderful Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay, conducted by Popi Spatocco. The song melts into “Se ela perguntar” by Dilermando Reis. Toquinho is alone with her this time; he is replaced by Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay on “Choro Tipico” and the bracing, lyrical, bittersweet sound-world of Heitor Villa-Lobos, which, in turns melts into Paulo Bellinati’s “Jongo”. I am speechless, and “Jongo” also fades into space – and into silence…

I break the velvet silence between us with what I believe must be mundane questions, such as “How are you?” and so on. But Miss Rojas always finds a meditative and introspective way to answer, capturing in her special way, BIG emotions on a small scale, with a poetic concentration that only an artist with her particularly powerful calibre can. Her answers are short, spoken intimately as if for me alone. Yet there is nothing hermetic about her approach at all. Gently, insistently, quietly, she draws me into her world – which is all melody and wonderfully chordal – and the effect is always thoroughly absorbing. I ask her if her gorgeous auburn hair has grown back again (after the virulent chemotherapy that she had recently been through) and first she laughs disarmingly, with a bright child-like giggle, then she sings a short line in praise of God and it is as if a whole Barcarolle has unfolded, its rhythms exploding like a box of rioting crayons, the echo of which beams its dynamic melody across the stratospheric miles that separate us: “By the grace of God…” (She breathes into the telephone). “He is a mighty God, and he is good,” she says.

The disc in my player runs out and I switch it back to the beginning. Felicidade begins to play, and Berta Rojas’ fingers make the song shimmy out of the speakers like a diaphanous gown unfurling. Song after song plays and I live each moment in the present, looking ahead and trying to fix my mind’s eye onto some distant point from where it appears safe to look back. Throughout, I feel as if I am in the presence of the finest of tour guides as Miss Rojas ushers me into secret spaces in of her choosing in a Brasil I am ever-grateful to discover. As Pliny once said, albeit in a different context, I feel that I am “choking with gold”. The history of Brasilian, in the spirit of the music, is gently unfolding as I follow Miss Rojas, walking past the long, long sleep of kings: Vinicius de Moraes, Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, Ernesto Nazareth, Baden Powell de Aquino, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Dilermando Dos Santos Reis… Their great names echo with legends of valour and epic stories, their waking and sleeping marked by iconic songs emerging from effervescent pens overflowing notes to sing in songs that will last forever. Miss Rojas makes each song a magnificent votive offering as if in a cathedral, joined here by three great Brasilians: Gilberto Gil, Toquinho, Ivan Lins. “A distinct honour,” was how she described the experience.

Berta Rojas is on song. Her music is coming from the springtime of her being. Her guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different colour, a different voice. She is playing softly now; then a little louder as the strings of Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay begin to argue with her. She finds her voice and begins to illuminate the melody of “Homenaje a Baden Powell” a rare composition by her and her guitar opens like a great tome from Jorge-Luis Borges’ mythical library Tlön, Uqbar, or Orbis Tertius. Miss Rojas then proceeds to reveal the guitar’s huge vocabulary of sounds and effects – song after song – that combine to make it sound as big as an ensemble, but which have always needed her insight to deploy effectively. Her sounds range from harmonics and pizzicato to technique exotica, such as ‘nut-side’, ‘nail sizzle’ and ‘bi-tone tapping’ (plus) she suddenly unleashes a battery of percussion possibilities (on Paulo Bellinati’s “Jongo”, for instance) as if her guitar has come with a drum set attached.

I am astounded by her technique and find, when I ask her about it, that she practices incessantly. She used to practice a lot more before her troubles, I find out. But now she is much more relaxed and makes time for many other things in life, such as events dedicated to women, women musicians and women who have come through breast-cancer, and to children – especially those who are severely underprivileged: For instance, she was joined by La Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura (literally the Recycled Instruments Orchestra of Cateura) played by children on instruments recycled from rubbish that they (the children) mine on the Cateura landfill on the outskirts of Asunción, haunted by these very children to eke out a meager existence. The song was Edin Solis’ “Tambito Josefino” and the album was Salsa Roja (ON Music, 2013) from which she began a Latin-American journey, albeit kick-started by an earlier encounter in Paraguay with Paquito D’Rivera, a recording entitled Día y Medio (ON Music, 2012). Those efforts resulted in a musical adventure in Argentina, Historia del Tango (ON Music, 2015) where Berta Rojas and Camerata Bariloche undertook to re-discover and re-imagine the work of Mariano Mores, Aníbal Troilo, Ástor Piazzolla, Virgilio Expósito, Julián Plaza and Anselmo Aieta. Here Miss Rojas was joined by Carlos Franzetti, whose magnificent arrangements animate the record like glimmering gems. It is also here where the guitarist came to work with Popi Spatocco, who conducted the Camerata Bariloche, and returned again later to (produce and) conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Paraguay, on Felicidade.

By then the die was cast. “I have a dream,” Berta Rojas tells me when we speak, “Of travelling throughout the length and breadth of South America to bring the great traditions to life from everywhere I go.” “What a wonderful idea!” I find myself saying to her. “And what a tiring journey that will be by the end of it all,” I add, thinking of how much of a strain it will be on her spry body as it recovers from the exhaustion of her two-year sorjourn to bring Felicidade to fruition from the day it took birth as she (Miss Rojas) began to feel the urge to glorify the unique (in all of South America and, indeed, the world) and extraordinary guitar music tradition of Brasil. The very thought of Berta Rojas making circling North and South America, and even branching out to Europe to promote Felicidade exhausts me. I ask her how she thinks she will feel doing all the legwork. “It is a labour of love,” she shoots back. “For me the enigma of arrival at my destination is so exciting, it fills me with energy,” she says. “No time to feel the melancholy of departure,” I tell her, as images of the pre-surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico flash by. “Besides the feeling of being alive in the music is a beautiful way to begin each day,” she adds, as if icing a delicious marble cake before my eyes. “There is nothing more beautiful than to be sustained by music, from the word ‘hello’ to the word ‘goodbye’… what else is there in the world, after all, but ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’” she says to me. I struggle to hold back the tears that suddenly fill my eyes; then run down my cheeks to my trembling lips. Are they tears of joy? Or sorrow? I cannot tell. But they taste bittersweet.

(I would be remiss if I did not thank Diane Blackman, Miss Rojas’ publicist, for putting up with me and my requests; and offer a cornucopia of gratitude to Berta Rojas for making time to speak with me)

As part of their 2015 North American tour, Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate, backed by bassist John Railton and drummer James Breen, bring their electrifying collaboration to US and Canada.

February 5th: Le Ballatou in Montréal
February 8th: Lula Lounge in Toronto

Joe Driscoll and Sekou Kouyate have all the makings of a power duo. The surprising aspect about this relationship is that they come from such disparate backgrounds… or perhaps not. Depending on how you look at it. Many musicians have tried, especially—as these two musicians did—at live performances, but that did not always result in a recording where the electricity between the two men could be channeled in a more meaningful dialogue. Yet the guitarist and the kora player not only got together under the auspices of Jacob Edgar and the folks at Cumbancha, but also made superb music together. Musically the two musicians were on the same pages, in the same book. World Music Report managed to get to them, in a break during their tour of North America, thanks to the efforts of Seanan Denizot of Cumbancha Records. Here’s what they had to say:

World Music Report: What brought the two of you together? How did you react when you first heard each other’s music?

Joe Driscoll: We were brought together by a festival called Nuit Métis, in Miramas, South of France. The organisers had worked with both of us before, and they thought the two of us would complement each other well. As soon as we began jamming, we realised there was some real chemistry there, and that our styles really complemented each other. When I first heard Sekou jamming through those effects, my jaw just hit the floor. I’d never heard anything like it before.

Sekou Kouyate: Yes, we first met in France for a concert we were both playing at. We had no intention of playing together. I am always exploring the universe of music and I love beat boxing and really admired what Joe did when I first heard it. Our cultures are very different but we are from the same generation, and that’s very intriguing.

WMR: When did you come up with the idea of working together?

JD: It was all a very organic process. Sekou and I were paired up to jam at the festival, and I just left my dicta-phone on the table throughout our jam sessions. In listening back I realised we had some really exciting stuff going on. I realised that through these few weeks of jam sessions, we had enough material to go into the studio and start work on an album. By chance we both had a gap in our schedules, and we did exactly that. The rest followed from the album.

SK: We started jamming together in France, and we kept jamming. The vibrations we were making were very positive. It was kind of like “why not?” when we first decided to work together. It felt natural.

WMR: How do you think the collaboration turned out?

JD: We have both loved the results. We feel the styles really blended well together on the album (Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate: Faya), and the response to the album has really been amazing. The live show continues to grow in demand for booking; the last two years of touring have been insane. Both in our own satisfaction with the album, and the response from the people- we feel it has turned out very well.

SK: I am really happy with the results. I think we took two very different cultures and blended them together in a natural way, which gave a new color to our sounds. I am very happy that we’ve brought our countries together through music.

WMR: What do you think should be the take away from this album? Is it just an experiment or something else?

JD: I don’t really know if it’s for us to say. Music stirs a different reaction from each listener, and we hope it has engaged people. As far as it being an experiment, I think it has reinforced the old adage that music has the power to unite people from all different cultures and places. I think it can help illustrate East and West can work in harmony, and we all have more in common than we sometimes think.

SK: Faya was our first attempt at opening borders and experimenting with our styles. It was a very strong start and I’m looking forward to growing on that.

WMR: Western music and African music are very different, melodically and harmonically. Also—and this is so obvious—rhythmically as well… Where do you think that the convergence of the music on this disc occurred and what is unique and different about it?

JD: I think really the differences between East and West musically can really create an amazing dynamic when they can play off of each other. Much like cooking, the interesting things come in when you are able to combine contrasting elements- like spicy and sweet. I feel this disc involves Sekou and me each playing our respective styles, but really listening to each other- and just trying to stay play off the other. I think what makes it unique is that neither of us has ever been held to genres, as we both listen to all different styles and genres, and to incorporate that into our compositions. I don’t think the album can really be put into any one genre, so I’d say that makes it fairly unique in even its classification.

SK: There’s a mix of jazz, blues and reggae in what Joe and I each do separately. I think that’s where we connected. His rap and the riffs of my kora blended together very easily.

WMR: Do you see yourselves working together again? Has another project become a germ of an idea already?

JD: Yes, we have been writing more songs while on the road together this last year or two, and plan on going back into the studio to begin a new album when this tour is over. As long as the music continues to inspire us, and the audience and booking agents keep showing an interest- we’ll keep following that inspiration.

SK: We’ve already started planning our next project and I’m excited to experiment further with new styles and taking this project further. We’ve got lots of surprises planned. I am personally always working on my own music as well and playing the kora for other bands. I love to open my horizons in all directions when it comes to music.

WMR: Thank you very much to both of you for taking the time to answer to our questions and connect with our readership.