Sura Susso

About

Peggy's Skylight | Nottingham
Wednesday 11th December 2024
Tickets: £12-£17

Doors at
7pm (Diners)
7:30pm (Standing)
Performance from 8pm 

Sura Susso was born in The Gambia, into a family of griots. Griots, referred to in Mandinka as Jali, are cultural figures in society across West Africa who carry the cultural knowledge and identity of the people.

His father, Mamudou Susso, is a renowned kora player in The Gambia, and his late mother, Fatou Bintu Cissokho, originally from the Casamance region of Senegal, was a formidable singer and percussionist. At seventeen, Sura moved to the UK as the percussionist in his brother's band, the Seckou Keita Quintet. He has worked with and performed alongside renowned international musicians including Baaba Maal, Rokia Traore, Habib Koite and Sona Jobarteh. His quest to promote the traditional music from his cultural roots in The Gambia and his fascination with experimenting with new genres have led him to perform and record in a number of interesting cross-cultural settings, including collaborations with the great British-German violinist Maximilian Baillie, Chinese erhu player Ling Peng, Indian sitarist Purbayan Chatterjee, French jazz trumpeter Erik Truffaz, South African opera singer Pumeza, Spanish-Senegalese band Africai, British multi-instrumentalist Pete Josef and an album with the duo 'Askew and Avis', called Kora Song Radio.

Susso is a creative and versatile master kora player, percussionist and singer/songwriter who hails from one of the most well-known Griot families in The Gambia. "Exquisite kora playing…" - Cerys Matthews.

"Exquisite kora playing…" – Cerys Matthews for Songlines
"it perfectly demonstrates his playing is technically proficient, refined and able to expand beyond tradition. An excellent example of a contemporary interpretation of the kora" – Martin Sinnock, Songlines

Line up:
Sura Susso – kora
TBC – percussion

"A beautiful, quietly experimental album brimming over with imagination and delivered with virtuosic authority." – Rock & Reel

"A delightful recital… It was a joy to watch and hear this master of his instrument at work…" – Chapter Arts