The Kentucky Center presents
FROM AFRICA TO APPALACHIA
Jayme Stone (banjo) and Yacouba Sissoko (Kora)
Thursday, April 15, 8 p.m.
The Kentucky Center, Bomhard Theatre
"A brilliant synthesis of music from two different cultures in which you can hear echoes and resonances of the journey that the banjo has made in its crossing of the Atlantic." - BBC RADIO 2
Video playlist: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=CD6CDCE0431781C3
www.jaymestone.com
Ticketing link: http://www.kentuckycenter.org/ticketing/tickets/production.aspx?performanceNumber=5489
Winner of two JUNO awards, banjo player and composer Jayme Stone is a musical disciple of Béla Fleck and Bill Frissell.
In the past four years, Stone spent considerable time in West Africa, researching the origins of the banjo. He became particularly curious about the music that may not have made it across the ocean on slave ships headed west from Senegal and Mali in the 1700- 1800’s.
During an eight-week trip to Mali was supported by a prestigious Chalmers Arts Fellowship, Stone sat in with Toumani Diabate and the Symmetric Orchestra in downtown Bamako, lost in circles of Wassoulou polyrhythms and in a rural Dogon village with no electricity where he inadvertently discovered a banjo predecessor unheard of in the West, the Kora.
The resulting album, Africa to Appalachia, is a boundary-crossing musical collaboration which won the 2009 Juno Award for World Music Album of the Year.
Stone will share the stage in Louisville with Malian Master Kora player Yacouba Sissoko, http://www.myspace.com/sissokoyacouba. Yacouba has travelled the globe, playing with African, Latin and R&B groups.