Mory Kanté

Mory Kanté gave voice and strings to a tradition that traveled across borders. His sound was born from the kora, that harp of strings he learned to master from the age of seven in Mali, but with roots in the Mandinga griot that ran in his blood. It wasn’t just music: it was the weight of a family of hereditary singers from Guinea, where rhythm and word are passed down as heritage. In his songs, Islamic chants mingled with melodies that leapt from Africa to Europe, as if time did not exist.

In 1971, when he joined the Rail Band, he had already been forging his style for years between the percussion of Guinea and the echoes of the Sahel. There, alongside Salif Keita, the group became a bridge between the ancestral and the modern. But it was in 1987 when his name crossed oceans. “Yé ké yé ké” didn’t just play on African radios: in 1988, the track climbed to the top spot in countries like Belgium, Finland, and Spain—something unprecedented for an artist from the continent. The album Akwaba Beach sold over a million copies, a record for its time.