Sona Jobarteh
The Gambia is a river with a country wrapped around it ... a strip of land a few miles wide on either bank, running inland from the Atlantic, with Senegal on every side ... It became its own nation in February 1965, and fifty years later, for the jubilee, Sona Jobarteh gave it this song ...
She was born in London, into the Jobarteh family, which is a griot family ... the kora, the twenty-one-string harp of West Africa, had passed through that family from father to son for centuries, and only to sons ... She is the first woman of a griot line to take it up as her profession ... She trained on cello and piano in London as well, and now runs a school in The Gambia where children learn the kora alongside their other lessons ... She has said very little in public about writing this one song ... what she said was that the response to it, from Gambians, was overwhelming ...
The kora usually plays alone, one griot, one instrument, the strings falling over each other like water ... She put a band under hers ... electric bass, a drum kit, guitar, all built around the kora's cascade, so that an instrument made for a courtyard can fill a stadium ... which is what the fiftieth birthday of a country needs ...
A song for a river ... written by the daughter who was born on another one ...