Photo Feature: Differing Musical Flavors Collide at Carleton
On Friday, Sept. 19, the musical project “Africa to Appalachia” played at Carleton College after an invitation from professor of French Cherif Keita. Led by the award-winning Canadian banjo player Jayme Stone and Quebec-based Malian Kora player Mansa Sissoko, the group was scheduled to play locally and Keita convinced them to play in Carleton’s Great Space on short notice. We have some great photos of the event taken by Nate Ryan ’10.
Photo Gallery of “Africa to Appalachia”
On Friday, Sept. 19, the musical project “Africa to Appalachia” played at Carleton College after an invitation from professor of French Cherif Keita. Led by the award-winning Canadian banjo player Jayme Stone and Quebec-based Malian Kora player Mansa Sissoko, the group was scheduled to play at the Chicago World Music Festival and some dates in Minneapolis and Zumbrota, Minn., so Keita convinced them to play in Carleton’s Great Space.
“This discovery was timely for me because this fall term I am teaching a course about the Cultural Expressions of the Mande World, the area from where the concept of the banjo was brought to the New World by West African slaves,” Keita said. “On a short notice, I decided to seize the opportunity to present them at Carleton thanks to a generous help from the Committee for the Studies in the Arts, American Studies, Cross-Cultural Studies, The Humanities Center at Carleton, French and Francophone Studies and Africa Special Projects.”
The group, whose four members speak French more or less fluently, came to both of Keita’s classes to introduce their music and answer questions from the students. Friday evening, the group played in Great Space to a large crowd composed of students and faculty from both Carleton and St Olaf and many Northfield area residents.
According to Keita, the opening number was a rendition on his 21-string harp-lute of one of the songs that make up the Malian Epic of Sunjata by Mansa Sissoko, who is a griot or Mande hereditary musician/praise singer. After that, all four musicians, Jayme Stone, Grant Gordy and Harris Eisenstadt and Mansa Sissoko, were on stage to perform songs from their newly released CD “Africa to Appalachia”. The group left the next morning for Grand Rapids, Minn., not without telling Keita how much they enjoyed playing at Carleton, a place they will always remember for its amazing hospitality and its great family-like atmosphere.”