Since her international début in 1997, Malian singer songwriter Rokia Traoré has always managed to strike an interesting balance between tradition and innovation. A ngoni and balafon player, she mainly sings in the Bambara language and draws inspiration from the rich tradition of the Mandé song repertoire or from other …
Rokia Traoré: Titati/Africa Unite
Malian singer songwriter Rokia Traoré’s “Roots” project emerged as a continuation of the Desdemona multimedia collaboration she contributed to in 2011. Written by American novelist and 1993 Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison and staged by experimental theatre director Peter Sellars, Desdemona is a play imagining a dialogue …