The Atlantic Ocean separates Cuba and Senegal, the respective birthplaces of piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and kora maestro Seckou Keita, a distance diminished by their shared ancestral connection to Africa.
In the summer of 2012, piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and kora maestro Seckou Keita were invited to perform together in London by their mutual friend, the drummer Marque Gilmore. “Seckou arrived just before the gig, took out his kora and started playing,” Omar remembers, “and I clicked with him like we had been playing together all our lives.”
Seckou loved Omar for his “high level of musical spirituality.” Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to blend, collaborate, but never lose his identity. Both men started their careers as drummers, so the melodies grooved. By the end of the night, the inevitable “hey man, let’s do a record” had been voiced. By the end of the year, they had begun work on their debut Transparent Water, which was released in 2017. Songlines called it ‘beautiful, rhapsodic and sometimes spiritual.’ For World Music Central it was a ‘sumptuous ride…mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated.’