The highly regarded Sth African classical guitasrist who amazed the kora masters by recreating the west african kora classics to classical guitar is touring a range of smaller venues around the country. Venues are being added to the list.
Aussie guitar afficionados – Derek Gripper is touring late Jan/ Feb 2024
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Lovely music. Sadly Derek Gripper will not be visiting the UK on his current tour, but perhaps one day I will be able to catch him in concert. He references Toumani Diabate’s Kaira on this clip. That album was my introduction to the beautiful sound of the kora and remains my favourite.
Gripper doesn’t play the ngoni here, but this is another fascinating instrument. Anyone interested in hearing it can listen to the albums of Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba. Highly recommended.
He is in UK regularly. Last visit I gave him a record by a famous blind ngoni player whose name escapes me – previous generation.
I expect he knows his way around one.
Derek played Uppsala this autumn with Ballake Sissoko and I would have loved to have seen them.
But it’s an hour’s train journey away and the evening trains back to Stockholm are very irregular, so I gave it a miss.
And I dare call myself myself a music fan! What a civilian I am!
These two also played that festival. Some friends mentioned Yamandu to me earlier this week. Jan Lundgren is a great favourite of @DuCo01 and myself.
@Munster this is the record I gave him. Very raw.