Sona Jobarteh

Sona JobartehA Singular Figure among Today's African Artists Banning Eyre (bio) Sona Jobarteh, the first woman to achieve an international profile playing the kora, is a singular figure in the pantheon of twenty-first-century African artists. Read Banning Eyre's profile of her here and then go online to listen to a playlist of her music. Sona Jobarteh is celebrated as the first woman to achieve an international profile playing the twenty-one-string West African harp, the kora. But her uniqueness goes well beyond that. She was born in London in 1983 to an English mother, the painter and filmmaker Galina Chester, and a Gambian father, kora master Sanjally Jobarteh. Sanjally comes from one of the five main kora-playing families among the Mande griots of West Africa. Griots are hereditary keepers of culture and history. Their role in Mande society is deep and complex, but they are best known for musical virtuosity as singers and instrumentalists. Click for larger view View full resolution Photo of Sona Jobarteh courtesy of MusicLive / Alamy Stock Photo. Photo of Banning Eyre by Robert Ebstein Sona's grandfather, the late Amadou Bansang Jobarteh, was one of the greatest and most influential kora players of his generation. Sona only knew him when she was a child, during her regular visits to the Gambia. Her deeper education on the kora would come later, through her father. But Sanjally had other wives, and it's fair to say that Sona grew up as much in the Western milieu of classical [End Page 5] music, jazz, and pop as in the familial compound of traditional kora players. This bicultural identity, more than her gender, is key to understanding her singular position among contemporary West African musicians. Sona played the kora from childhood. She first learned from her brother, Tunde Jegede. Eleven years older than Sona, Tunde was born to Galina Chester and a Nigerian father. He went on to become an accomplished composer, taking the kora into the realms of classical, popular, and even Indian music. Following her brother's Western-oriented lead, Sona studied cello, piano, and harpsichord at the Royal College of Music and then composition at the Purcell School of Music. During these years, she mostly set the kora aside. In a 2019 interview with Afropop Worldwide, she said that the two systems of musical education did not connect for her. "It was very explicit," she said, referring to her classical training. "If you want to pursue this, it has to be absolute. It was very much discouraged for me to show any interest in diversity. Not subtly, explicitly. I was told clearly that if I want to pursue this, I must leave other things behind. So it was a difficult time for me." Ultimately vexed by this dilemma, Sona chose the kora. She was seventeen years old at the time. "I went to my father," she explained. "He was living in Norway, and I asked him, 'Will you teach me?' He agreed, and we spent such intensive time just on the side of his bed for so long. I was studying and studying as much as I could." Sanjally offered scant praise to his daughter—"My dad is the older generation. They don't say, 'Oh, well done'"—but he made one thing clear. As Sona recalls, he told her, "Make sure you don't consider the female thing. I'm going to teach you as my child, not as my daughter. This is me passing it on to the next generation. I want to make sure you become a good kora player. Not a female kora player, a good kora player." And she did. She also taught herself guitar and began writing songs, which featured on her debut album Afro-Acoustic Soul in 2008. But it was really with her second album, Fasiya in 2011, that she became the artist we know today. "I see Fasiya as my statement," said Sona. "I had been through so much, so many different avenues and paths and different possibilities to pursue. But this album resulted because I made the decision, consciously, to follow what is natural for me, and not to worry

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