«A Touma, the time has come. I've turned 50 and, as I get on, I know that the day will come when I will no longer be able to do certain things. I would like young people to listen to my music and think, ah, listen to the old man, he was definitely with it!»
For Ballaké Sissoko, at the very heart of all and everything is the music produced by the twenty-one strings stretched across the “kora”, his signature instrument, the typical West African harp/lute that the musician inherited from his father more than forty years ago, honouring a centuries-old tradition and making him one of the masters of Malian music.
Universal yet intimate, singular and plural, Ballaké Sissoko bestows on music the form of a relationship. Having the courage to be ourselves and not hide behind a mask, preserving the memory of our roots, building a connection with the lives of other people, finding the power to reach out to a starry sky or a stormy sea: in a fragmented world, Ballaké Sissoko, just like an alchemist, knows how to hold everything together and hand it down to the generations to come.
During these strange and paradoxical ‘solitary dialogues’, he makes his kora speak and reacts to the emotions it arouses in him, letting his imagination and his fingers fly off to landscapes that are both magnificent and unknown. It’s there that his qualities as an improviser can be accurately measured.
To reach the Campana dei Caduti there is a Trentino Trasporti shuttle bus service. Departure is at 5.00 pm from the Via Paoli stop.
In the event of rain, the concert will be performed in the conference room of the Mart - Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto.
