World music trio Jaaleekaay are a unique musical collaboration who blend Western musical styles with the cultural traditions of The Gambia in West Africa to create a new, contemporary sound.
Jaaleekaay (meaning ‘crossing point’ in the Wolof dialect of West Africa) features guitarist Steve Berry performing alongside Amadou Suso playing the kora, a stringed instrument steeped in over 700 years of tradition. Renowned singer Yusupha Ngum completes the outfit with vocals sung in his native Wolof language.
Steve explains how the project came together through his work with music education programmes in regional and remote Australian communities. “I founded an organisation called Music Outback Foundation, which does community-music-based education and community-development work in Central Australian Aboriginal communities,” he says.
“One trip out there I was working with a Gambian percussionist called King Marong and he said to me in the middle of the desert: ‘Steve, you’ve got to come to Gambia and do this', because he said there were no music schools there at all or anything like that support.”Jaaleekaay embarked on their first national tour two years and are currently nearing the end of an extensive run of shows in support of their self-titled, full-length album released earlier this year. “It’s been fantastic,” Steve says of the audience response to the band.
“We’ve done some of our gigs as a five piece, which is also how the album was recorded, but we’ve also worked as a trio and quartet. It doesn’t matter which way we do it, the audience engagement has just been astounding. We’ve had standing ovations and really great feedback from people who seem to love it.”
One of Jaaleekaay’s final performances for the tour is part of BEMAC's World Music Series later this month. Steve says the audience can look forward to a packed setlist of both contemporary and traditional songs. “It will be a quartet, so it’ll be the three of us plus a percussionist playing mainly kajon. In fact it’s my son Marley who’s playing kajon, and that’s the same line-up we just came back from the national tour, which was just a fantastic experience musically for us.
“They’ll hear all the music across the whole repertoire and Grace Barbe is opening the show, so that’ll be exciting for us and to bounce off that, it’s going to be a great show. In the Jaaleekaay performance you’ll hear all these compositions but also you’ll hear Amadou doing traditional kora-playing which shows you where the music came from and where his roots are.”
For Steve, who has played with artists such as Kev Carmody, Shane Howard and Robyn Archer, Jaaleekaay is a distinctly special opportunity to work with two highly respected West African performers. “Amadou is himself a direct-line descendant of the first kora master [Korea Musa Suso] from over 750 years ago,” Steve explains. “It’s been handed down over the generations ever since and his father was an amazing kora player.
“Yusupha’s father [the late Musa Ngum] was also a superstar vocalist across West Africa. We’re dealing with two guys who come from very strong musical lineages and I feel very lucky to be playing with them that way.”
Jaaleekaay perform at the BEMAC World Music Series at Queensland Multicultural Centre 22 April. They also play the Mullumbimby Civic Hall 23 April and the Bello Winter Music Festival (Bellingen) which takes place 7-10 July.
