Offstage Live: Music at the Museum featuring Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba
Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba ecstatically explore the spiritual songs, stories, and rhythms of Senegal’s millennia-old Mandé culture. Cissokho comes from a long line of griots who are entrusted to maintain a West African village’s genealogies and ceremonial affairs through song, but he is much more than a preservationist. Cissokho and his band, Kaira Ba, effortlessly integrate the traditional sounds of the kora with a modern rush of electric guitar and an exuberant rhythm section.
The band formed in North Carolina in January 2011, shortly after Cissokho’s immigration to the U.S. Kaira Ba has produced three albums, toured extensively in the U.S., and traveled twice as a band to Senegal. In 2014 the band was nominated for the All Africa Music Award for its album The Great Peace. In 2018 Kaira Ba released its most ambitious album to date, Routes, which was recorded in both North Carolina and Senegal. Rock critic Robert Christgau wrote that the album “is up there with the groundbreaking recordings of Thione Seck, Baaba Maal, and Youssou N’Dour.”
Join us as Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba perform virtually from the North Carolina Museum of Art!
Presented with:
