Jayme Stone & Mansa Sissoko
Africa to Appalachia
Jayme Stone

There’s something utterly enchanting about this collaboration, so honest and unapologetic in its mission to merge Malian kora (harp-lute) and North American banjo music, that from the very first cascade of the two instruments together, to the sawing, edgy fiddling and banjo weaving on the old Appalachian favourite ‘Chinquapin Hunting’, the listener is riveted.

Jayme Stone, a young Canadian banjo player, decided to go to Mali to find out what kind of music had been left behind when slave ships brought instruments like the ekontin and the ngoni from West Africa, finally evolving into what we know today as the banjo. He met kora player Mansa Sissoko and the pair came up with this recording, which is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Many of the tracks are old West African favourites, and anyone familiar with Toumani Diabaté or Baaba Maal’s repertoire will recognise at least a couple of the songs. Some of the songs have nothing to do with West Africa at all – although Stone claims to hear strains of Wassoulou music (a Malian form) in some of the Appalachian tracks such as the frenzied ‘June Apple’ – and this album is a great chance for fans of one style to become acquainted with the other. Constant throughout both styles is the completely natural-sounding marriage of the banjo with the kora and ngoni. The banjo seems to adapt just as naturally to old West African musical lore as the kora is able to roll up and down an Appalachian mountain favourite. The whole thing just seems completely at ease with itself; a real joy to listen to.

By: Rose Skelton