Omar Sosa & Seckou Keita
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SUBA, the second album from piano virtuoso Omar Sosa (Cuba) and kora masterand singer Seckou Keita (Senegal) , is released worldwide on 22 October 2021 on the bendigedig label. The album follows the Duo’s acclaimed debut Transparent Water (2017) which was hailed as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ (Songlines) and ‘mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated’ (World Music Central).
Written and recorded in 2020 during the global lockdown, SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and real change in a post-pandemic world, and a visceral reiteration of humanity’s perennial prayer for peace and unity. The Atlantic Ocean separates Cuba and Senegal, the respective birthplaces of Omar Sosa and Seckou Keita, a distance diminished by their shared ancestral connection to Africa. When the pair first met in 2012, Seckou loved Omar for his musical spirituality, whilst Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to collaborate but not lose hisidentity.
Sosa has released over 30 albums during an incredible career that has included nominations for seven GRAMMY or Latin GRAMMY awards. Keita is also a multi-award winner, most recently ofthe prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year (2019). Their combined talents are joined on the new recording by the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles, who also appears at all the Duo’s live performances, Jaques Morelenbaum (cello), Dramane Dembélé (flute) and Steve Argüelles (sequencing, effects, percussion).
SUBA means ‘sunrise’ in Mandinka, Seckou’s native language, and sunrise is his favourite time of day, a time of freshness and hope. “Even if you’re facing certain difficulties, you reset your brain back to normal. You see the sunrise as a new day, a new peace, a new something, good or bad -an exciting something. That was the feeling I had when I was writing with Omar.” And although Seckou calls the pandemic “a top-level university of seeing the world in a different way”, it wasn’t because of COVID he and Omar decided on the name. “It was SUBA for many things: music, art, human beings, compassion, change.” For Omar, the album is a heartfelt reiteration of humanity’s oldest prayer. “The concept of the record is peace, hope and unity. In this moment we’re living, when everything’s falling apart little by little, the one thing we have inside ourselves is a divine connection with our inner voice, with our spirit and light and with our ancestors. We try to give hope through music and tell people that we can be together.” Two core principles guided the enterprise: less is more (or minimalismoas Omar likes to call it) and collaboration.
“The project is Africa,” says Omar, “done our way. We present our own traditions, but we always respect and listen to each other, with a lot of humility. No one is the boss. The boss is the music. The boss is the message.”
“The one thing that Africa can teach the world is the spirituality in every single thing,” says Omar. “We are often slaves to our crazy and humiliating society, where everyone needs to be ‘successful’.” SUBA is the sound of two musicians from disparate continents and traditions, coming together and really jelling. It offers a rare type of magic.
Press
“an extraordinary album seamlessly melding Latin American and West African music”
– Roger Farbey, All About Jazz
“Transparent Water is where world music meets world jazz, where tradition meets improvisation and where the lines of spiritual and earthy meet-The result is stunningly evocative.”
– TJ Nelson, World Music Central
“Beautiful, rhapsodic, and sometimes spiritual”
– SONGLINES
“Sosa and Keita deliver a work that variously ebbs, flows and sparkles”
– Jane Cornwell, Jazzwise