(Awesome Tapes From Africa, Paris)

An offering simply named "En Hollande", seems to be an unlikely contender for being a modern kora classic, but Sourakata Koite's debut album recorded in an old henhouse in Delft 1984 is nothing short of that.

The kora is a lute popular all over West Africa and has normally 21 strings (Koite's customized instrument has 22, though, and he is known to be experimenting with unusual tunings). It is mostly known as the central instrument of the griots, itinerant singers who are much-respected members of the ancestral cast societies. Born in a Senegalese village close to the Mauritanian border 1955, Sourakata Koite moved to Paris in the late 1970es and found a way to make a living by entertaining the international and mixed crowds of a new type of fancy African restaurants springing up at the Seine around that time.

"En Hollande" is set to be newly published by Awesome Tapes From Africa in January 2019.

Planet Rock is excited to present Sourakata Koite's first international appearances in years.