Providence Public Library

Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin are award-winning musicians who have joined forces on their Smithsonian Folkways release, symbiont (2024). Blount (pronounced “blunt”) is a renowned interpreter of Black folk music who is recognized for his skill as a string band musician and for his unprecedented Afrofuturist work in sound archives and song collections. In his hands, the banjo, […]

BALA-BILA brings together two African master musicians–Balla Kouyate on balafon, calabash, bass guitar and voice, and Matchume Zango on timbila, mbira, percussion and voice–through a live concert framed as an intercultural musical conversation between the two artists. Kouyate, from the West African country of Mali, and Zango, from the East African country of Mozambique, are leading exponents of […]