My parents were both griots.When I was very young, I watched my father play and my mother sing and I noted how my father taught my older brother to play the kora, but I was forbidden.
I first saw Prince Diabate perform at an event for the Dalai Lama’s citywide World Festival of Sacred Music held in LA in 1999. I was mesmerized. I was flattened by the cascades and crescendos of celestial sound that flowed from his exuberant kora (West African harp). It sounded like angel tears bursting into fireworks of joy!
