AMARRASS RECORDS 

UPCOMING SHOWS

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  INDIA TOUR 2018 - New Delhi, Ziro Festival of Music, Bengluru

   Wed 26 SEP  Auro Kitchen & Bar (get tickets)

   Sat   29 SEP  Ziro Festival of Music, Arunachal Pradesh

   Fri    5 OCT   Windmills Craftworks, Bengluru

   Sat   6 OCT   Windmills Craftworks, Bengluru

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"Madou Sidiki Diabate.. sounds not of this world at all. His rippling, harp-like arpeggios and dizzyingly complex interlocking melodies seem to descend on warm wings from a yearning heaven of billowing, fragrant heat."

- Daniel Spicer, The Wire (Jan 2015/Issue 371)

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Madou Sidiki Diabatè started playing the kora at age three. By the time he was six years old, he was playing his first concert as a representative of the 71st generation of kora players in his family. He learned his art under his father, Sidiki Diabaté, a man generally referred to as the “King of the Kora”.

His elder brother, Toumani Diabaté is also a famed korist and Grammy Award winner. If Madou Sidiki Diabaté’s lineage is formidable, then so is his talent. In his element, as he was during the Amarrass Desert Music Festival at New Delhi, he evinces astonishment, amazement and gasps of wonder from the audience. In this 30-year-old’s hands, the kora is full of deception: it looks like a simple, even rustic instrument capable of basic sounds. But close your eyes and you hear many musicians in harmony.

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Madou captures that traditional sound and infuses his own jazz sensibilities in his first live solo kora album. Recorded at the Amarrass Desert Music Festival held November 26 and 27, 2011 in New Delhi, India, this is the music of his forefathers of the Griot community—West Africa’s historians and storytellers, his roots embedded in every chord.

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• He has performed on stages across the globe and collaborated with musicians such as Damon Albarn, Vieux Farka Tourè, Lakha Khan, Painted Caves and more. 

• His album 'Mali Latino' with Alex Wilson and Ahmed Fofana was a 2010 'Top of the World' Album in Songlines.

• Madou has made five tours of India, with concerts in Delhi at the Amarrass Festival, Depot29, Amarrass Nights@Lodi, TC's, in Bangalore at 'An Ode to the Blues' Festival at Counterculture, and in 2015 at the India-Africa Forum Summit at the President's Palace (Rashtrapati Bhavan) where he played to 30 Heads of State from Africa and the Indian President and Prime Minister.

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PRESS

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"Madou Sidiki Diabate.. sounds not of this world at all. His rippling, harp-like arpeggios and dizzyingly complex interlocking melodies seem to descend on warm wings from a yearning heaven of billowing, fragrant heat." - Daniel Spicer in The Wire (Jan 2015/Issue 371)

"This exquisite performance showcases the range of emotion and polyphonic depth possible with the Kora. A wonderful performance!" - CKCU FM 93.1 Ottawa Canada

"Seriously good, nicely improvisatory player" - Australian Broadcasting Corporation

"An exceptional kora player" - HTBrunch