Bassekou Kouyate was born in Garana, a small, multi-ethnic village 60 km from Segou located at the banks of the Niger river. He is descended from a long line of griots on both sides of his family. In the mid-eighties Bassekou started playing the traditional sumu circuit, which soon put him in touch with another extraordinary musician, the kora player Toumani Diabate. At the end of the 1980s, Bassekou became a founding member of Toumani Diabate’s Symmetric Orchestra, which then included among others a young Habib Koite as lead singer. It was the Symmetric Trio that brought Bassekou to Europe for the first time to play at the festival in Dranouter in Belgium in 1990. Later that same year, Bassekou made his first trip to the USA, where he met the African American blues musician, Taj Mahal.
In the mid 1990s Bassekou married Amy Sacko, a fine griot singer originally from northwest Mali. As a couple, they produced a number of popular cassettes and were in constant demand on the wedding circuit and on Mali television, where Amy was nicknamed “the Tina Turner of Mali.”
In 2005 Bassekou was invited by Mali’s “desert bluesman” Ali Farka Touré to play on his album ‘Savane’ and to join Ali on stage for his final tour in the summer of 2005. In the same year Bassekou decided to create his band Ngoni Ba. Ngoni Ba is something of an unusual band formation, featuring ngonis with different tonal voices, along with the powerful vocals of Amy Sacko and two percussionists. Since 2005 Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba have toured the world playing hundreds of shows including major venues and festivals such as NYC’s Central Park, the Royal Albert Hall (London),Roskilde (DK) Glastonbury (UK), New Orleans Jazz & Heritage (US), Fuji Rock Festival (JP), North Sea Jazz Festival (Holland), WOMAD (UK) and Telluride’s Planet Bluegrass Festival.
Bassekou has also performed with other outstanding artists including bluesman Taj Mahal, banjo star Bela Fleck, and Damon Albarn’s Africa Express (w/Sir Paul McCartney, and John Paul Jones, among others). In 2013 the BBC chose Bassekou as “best African artist of the year”. His CD “Miri” was #1 in the world music charts Europe in February and March 2019 and was voted as “Best Album of the Year” by Songlines magazine. Bassekou’s most recent tour (2023) in the US brought them to the Big Ears Festival, Savannah Music Festival, the afore-mentioned New Orleans Jazz & Heritage and Telluride’s Planet Bluegrass Festival, as well as smaller and sometimes rural communities where opportunities to engage with students were a big hit.
In collaboration with ALIA Prod.
