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Foday Musa Suso
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Foday Musa Suso was a Gambian musician and composer, born on 18 February 1950 and died on 25 May 2025. He came from the Mandinka and was a griot. Griots are the oral historians and musicians of the Mandingo in West Africa. They are a living library for their community and pass on history, entertainment and wisdom in song and playing. Suso was descended from Jali Madi Wuleng Suso, the griot who is said to have invented the kora more than four centuries ago. He grew up in a traditional village in Gambia, in a house full of kora music.
Music and breakthrough
In 1977 he left for Chicago, and was thus one of the first jalis to settle in North America. There, with the percussionists Hamid Drake and Adam Rudolph, he formed the Mandingo Griot Society, which played fusion music. His first albums were Kora Music From The Gambia from 1978 and Hand Power from 1984. He worked with Bill Laswell and Philip Glass. His electrified kora can be heard on Herbie Hancock's Sound-System from 1984, and the following year Suso and Hancock made the duo album Village Life, with synthesizer, kora, talking drum and vocals.
Influence
Suso brought the kora, a West African stringed instrument with a clear, harp-like sound, to jazz, electronica and minimalist music. In this way he showed that a centuries-old griot tradition could take part in modern popular music. Sunjata, the piece from School of Rock, refers to the epic of the founder of the Mali Empire, which griots have told for centuries.
Listening
Sunjata · Foday Musa Suso, 1976
Discography
Studio albums
- 1978Kora Music From The Gambia
- 1984Hand Power
- 1984Watto Sitta
- 1985Village Life
- 1986Mansa Bendung
- 1990The Dreamtime
- 1992The Screens (soundtrack)
- 1996Jali Kunda: Griots of West Africa & Beyond
- 2005Music From the Hearts of the Masters