This article was last updated on April 16, 2022
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Small World Music & Lula Lounge Presents: Joe Driscoll & Sekou Kouyate
“A gloriously accessible collision of styles… that works magnificently.” – The Guardian
The collaboration between a rapper/beatboxer/singer-songwriter from Syracuse, NY and an electrifying kora sensation from Guinea pushes genre boundaries and has earned raves across the globe. Joe Driscoll and Sekou Kouyate blend hip-hop and funk with irresistible African grooves, soulful rock with Afrobeat, reggae with spoken word and more. Their last Toronto appearance at Harbourfront Centre in August 2014 was sensational and they return to Toronto riding a continuing wave of positive energy.
“A boundary-trampling high-octane hybrid in which the lightning fast electrified licks of Kouyate are matched by the explosive energy of Driscoll’s rapid fire rhyming.”
– Songlines
The well-worn and often overblown expression ‘music is a common language’ has never been more apropos in the case of Driscoll and Kouyate. US-born, England-based Driscoll speaks no French and Kouyate, who hails from the West African country of Guinea, little English. When they were brought together at the Nuit Metis (Mixed Night) festival in Marseille in 2010 and given a week to produce a concert, music was the only way they could communicate.
“He doesn’t speak any French, and I speak no English… but through music, we understand.” Sekou Kouyate
It turns out, they had a lot to “talk” about, and their first meeting sparked a collaboration that led to the formation of a band, the recording of an album, over 120 concert dates across Europe and rave reviews. Driscoll contributes the rapping, looping, beatboxing and songwriting talents he developed growing up in Syracuse, New York and during his own successful recording career. Kouyate, already a phenomenon in African music circles, has blown minds and ears with his hypersonic electrified riffs on the kora, bringing the exalted West African harp into the 21st Century with use of effects and previously-unimagined technical prowess.
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