By Tamsin Davies
Published October 19, 2021
SUBA, the second album from piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and kora master and singer Seckou Keita, is set for release worldwide on October 22, 2021.
The album, to be released on the bendigedig label, follows the duo’s acclaimed debut, Transparent Water (2017), which was hailed as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ by Songlines and ‘mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated’ by World Music Central.
SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and real change in a post-pandemic world, and a visceral reiteration of humanity’s perennial prayer for peace and unity.
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The Atlantic Ocean separates Cuba and Senegal, the respective birthplaces of Omar Sosa and Seckou Keita, a distance diminished by their shared ancestral connection to Africa. When the pair first met in 2012, Seckou loved Omar for his musical spirituality, whilst Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to collaborate but not lose his identity.
Sosa has released over 30 albums during an incredible career that has included nominations for seven GRAMMY or Latin GRAMMY awards. Keita is also a multi-award winner, most recently of the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year (2019).
Their combined talents are joined on the new recording by the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles, who also appears at all the Duo’s live performances, Jaques Morelenbaum (cello), Dramane Dembélé (flute) and Steve Argüelles (sequencing, effects, percussion).
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SUBA means ‘sunrise’ in Mandinka, Seckou’s native language, and sunrise is his favourite time of day, a time of freshness and hope. “Even if you’re facing certain difficulties, you reset your brain back to normal. You see the sunrise as a new day, a new peace, a new something, good or bad – an exciting something. That was the feeling I had when I was writing with Omar.”
And although Seckou calls the pandemic ‘a top-level university of seeing the world in a different way’ it wasn’t because of COVID he and Omar decided on the name. “It was Suba for many things: music, art, human beings, compassion, change.”
For Omar, the album is a heartfelt reiteration of humanity’s oldest prayer. “The concept of the record is peace, hope and unity. In this moment we’re living, when everything’s falling apart little by little, the one thing we have inside ourselves is a divine connection with our inner voice, with our spirit and light and with our ancestors. We try to give hope through music and tell people that we can be together.”
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Two core principles guided the enterprise: less is more (or minimalismo as Omar likes to call it) and collaboration. “The project is Africa,” says Omar, “done our way. We present our own traditions, but we always respect and listen to each other, with a lot of humility. No one is the boss. The boss is the music. The boss is the message.”
“The one thing that Africa can teach the world is the spirituality in every single thing,” says Omar. “We are often slaves to our crazy and humiliating society, where everyone needs to be ‘successful’.”
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The eleven tracks comprising Suba are linked by common themes that are woven throughout the recording. The songs tell of friendship and spiritual connection, of travel and loss, of hope and optimism, of dancing and the sea… and, of course, of a new sunrise.
Suba is the sound of two musicians from disparate continents and traditions, coming together and really jelling. It offers a rare type of magic. Between Africa and Cuba – a vast expanse of ocean. The kora scatters handfuls of light on the waves, the piano ploughs its furrow. Here, there, the dignity of a mellow, unhurried grace. Eyes shielded in a new morning. A new dawn. A new day.
