“The blues is bigger than most people think,” Taj Mahal says. “You could hear Mozart play the blues. It might be more like a lament. It might be more melancholy. But I’m going to tell you: the blues is in there.”
Taj is a towering musical figure -- a legend who transcended the blues not by leaving them behind, but by revealing their magnificent scope to the world. Quantifying the 77- year-old’s significance is impossible, but people try anyway. A 2017 Grammy win for TajMo, Taj’s collaboration with Keb’ Mo’, brought his Grammy tally to three wins and 14 nominations, and underscored his undiminished relevance more than 50 years after his solo debut. Blues Hall of Fame membership, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and other honors punctuate his résumé. Taj appreciates the accolades, but his motivation lies elsewhere. “I just want to be able to make the music that I’m hearing come to me -- and that’s what I did,” Taj says. “When I say, ‘I did,’ I’m not coming from the ego. The music comes from somewhere. You’re just the conduit it comes through. You’re there to receive the gift.”
The spirit of Sona Jobarteh’s musical work stands on the mighty shoulders of The West African Griot Tradition; she is a living archive of the Gambian people. Born into one of the five principal Griot families in west Africa, a hereditary tradition dating back 700 years to the Mali Empire, Jobarteh is the first female to master the kora, a 21-string instrument that combines the qualities of a lute and a harp.
Jobarteh’s childhood was spent between England, and the village in Gambia of her grandfather, Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, a kora master and griot, who was so influential he served as an adviser to Gambia’s first president. Sona earned a scholarship to the prestigious Purcell School of Music and the Royal College of Music in the UK where she studied the cello, piano and harpsichord as well as composition and scoring. However, she was originally introduced to the kora at age 4, and officially began studying under her father at age 17, breaking an ancient, male-dominated hereditary tradition that had been exclusively handed down from father to son for the past seven centuries.
With one ear on the family’s historic reputation, one ear on the all-important future legacy and her heart in both places, she is preparing a place today for the next generation. Her singing and kora playing while fronting her Afro-pop band, spring directly from this tradition. Today, she has over 27 million views on YouTube and 400,000 to 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. All this despite singing in her native languages and keeping to her own path within the music industry.
Sona has brought her live performances across the globe, including North America, as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. She was commissioned to write the opening and closing sequence music for the 2022 Hollywood blockbuster, Beast, starring Idris Elba, and composed the score for the multiple award-winning film, Motherland. She has released two albums. The most recent in 2022, Badinyaa Kumoo, is a musical manifesto expressing her vision of empowering women, children, artists, and African societies to effect positive change.
Sona’s dedication to spreading powerful humanitarian messages through her songs and her stage performances makes her much more than a musician; she is active in social change and leads by her own example. Sona founded The Gambia Academy in 2015, a pioneering institution dedicated to achieving educational reform across the continent of Africa. This Academy is the first of its kind to deliver a mainstream academic curriculum at a high level, while also bringing the culture, traditions and history that belong to its students, to the front and center of their everyday education. These efforts have gained her invitations to deliver speeches at high profile events around the world – including summits for the UN, the World Trade Organization, and UNICEF.
In 2023, Sona Jobarteh received an honorary degree from the prestigious Berklee College of Music, joining other notable honorees such as Justin Timberlake, Sting, Aretha Franklin, and Herbie Hancock.
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