Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba

Mali returns to Cambridge this year in the shape of Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba, picking up the mantle laid down last year by Toumanui Diabate & Symmetric Orchestra.
They arrive with quite some pedigree having picked un the Radio 3 World Music Album of the year award for their "Segu Blue" album.
Whilst immersed in griot culture, Bassekou Kouyate and the band have adopted a more blues/Afrobeat edge to their sound to fuse modern influences into the more traditional aspects of the sound.
As with a lot of African music there is a very spiritual feel to the final sound. It's got a number of complex and textured layers, almost spliting voice and instrumentation.
Bassekou Kouyate is one of the best known ngoni players in the world and has performed with the likes of U2 and Taj Mahal, who described him as a genius.
If, like me, you are unsure as to what an ngoni is, imagine a guitar mated with a boat paddle, long and thin string instrument with a guitar like soundbox. An African uke would be another description and like the uke it comes in a number of shapes and sizes. Failing imagining it, google it :-)