Kora

You don't very often get kora concerts five minutes' walk from home and especially not with someone as talented as Seckou Keita playing. Otherwise I wouldn't have jumped quite so fast onto my bike in the rain after a great afternoon seeing Bundle, in her back-in-Oxford new home, for the first time in well over four years (aagh - I blame Covid mostly, but also me...). It was Bundle who introduced me to Blipfoto and she might, just might, start blipping again. I'd be happy to pass on any encouragement.

I've heard Seckou Keita play before, brilliantly, with others and I was really looking forward to the intimacy of a solo gig in a small space. The first two pieces left me sadly cold. And, truly, truly, it does not help to have the person on stage call out, 'Are you having fun, Oxford?' (I am not Oxford). Then, grating as toothache, 'I didn't hear that. Are you having a good time?' I find this perpetual, inevitable ritual tedious, boring and the opposite of conducive to any good time I might have and I wish performers would stop doing it. But since most people respond with enthusiasm, it's probably me. Not much point doing a straw poll here, since I think most of my followers are, well, not quite in the middle of the bell curve.

Seckou Keita brought his cousin, Dialy Kemo Cissokho, onto the stage saying that he'd just got off a plane from Senegal. Cissokho's stage presence was timid enough for me to believe it, but Google tells me that they've been playing together across the UK all summer so I don't know why his voice was so high up in his body. I was close enough to know that he was in tune. Fine percussion though.

At one point, under my breath, even more quietly than Dialy, I was singing along with a really lovely motif. I was thrilled that Seckou then asked us all to sing it as an accompaniment for him to sing against. It turned out to be a song about advice from his grandfather to be humble, to know that there will always be others who are richer, more talented...

Toward the end Seckou Keita brought on on his uncle, Jali Fily Cissokho, who was one of the first people I ever heard playing kora, long ago. I know that griot families are closely related but I had no idea that these two were that close.

It's really hard work, I know, to be a performer - musician, actor, teacher, whatever - and I feel for Seckou Keita that his upbeat jollity felt unreal. Maybe there's something going on in the background or maybe it works in a bigger venue than this, but I wish more of the evening had felt a bit more authentic, as his explanation of how a kora works did. Even so, I came away smiling, and as I write this I am listening to recordings of him playing this exquisite instrument.