The performance will be followed by a community gathering and celebration in Roulette.
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Program
Alla l'aa ke (arr. David Bloom)
Contemporaneous
Mbitta (arr. Jordyn Davis)
Contemporaneous with Jali Bakary Konteh & Mafu Conteh
Sutakung (arr. Davis)
Contemporaneous with Jali & Mafu
Jula Jekere (arr. Josh Henderson)
Contemporaneous with Jali & Mafu
Jato (arr. Henderson)
Contemporaneous with Jali & Mafu
Eliji Bamba Bojang (arr. Zachary Ritter)
Contemporaneous with Jali & Mafu
TBD
Jali & Mafu
Jelanka (arr. Dylan Mattingly)
Contemporaneous
Masane Sessay (arr. Ritter)
Contemporaneous
Alla l'aa ke (arr. Mattingly)
Contemporaneous with Jali & Mafu
ABOUT
Parables is a collaborative project featuring the music and performances of Gambian griots Mafu Conteh and Jali Bakary Konteh in partnership with the chamber orchestra forces of Contemporaneous. Mafu Conteh and Jali Bakary Konteh are the grandsons of legendary Mandinka griot and kora player Alhaji Bai Konte, the figure largely responsible for bringing the Gambian kora to international acclaim in the 1970s. Gambia’s Mandinka tradition of music and oral history has been passed down for hundreds of years and generations of griot families, and Mafu Conteh and Jali Bakary Konteh are the current bearers of that cultural legacy.
In 2019, Contemporaneous arranged and performed a song by Alhaji Bai Konte, the video of which was discovered by the grandsons of Bai Konte. Sensing an innate connection between the ensemble and their grandfather’s music, they reached out to Contemporaneous, and from that first seed, a collaboration was born. This show will see the culminating fruition of this years-in-the-making musical cross-cultural dialogue, as Conteh, Konteh, and Contemporaneous have worked together to create brand new orchestrations of the music of Conteh, Konteh, and their grandfather within an expanded musical context of the 23-member ensemble of Contemporaneous.
Parables features Konteh performing on kora, balafon, and voice alongside the full ensemble, arrangements of their music written exclusively for the ensemble of Contemporaneous created in collaboration with composers Jordyn Davis, Josh Henderson, Dylan Mattingly, and Zachary Ritter. Woven together, this years-long collaboration offers a unique celebration for the musical tradition of Mandinka culture within the modern musical context in New York City.
This performance is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs.
