Transcontinental, Episode 1: Aby Ngana Diop

The programme explores the unprecedented recording of griotte Aby Ngana Diop, who performed taasu over mbalax music ( "taasu is a form of oral poetry spoken to the rhythmic accompaniment of sabar and tama drums [...]It is a rhythmically declaimed speech in call-and-response with a small chorus of female vocalists'' Patricia Tang for Awesome Tapes From Africa). She released her only album in 1994 in Senegal, which Awesome Tapes From Africa distributed in 2014." The combination of Diop and her backup vocalists with their powerful taasu, along with the driving, complex rhythms of the sabar and tama drums, mixed with key elements of mbalax (such as the syncopated, polyphonic marimba sounds played on the Yamaha DX7 keyboard) was something the Senegalese public had never heard before" P.TangGuests:Marame Gueye is Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora literatures in the department of English at East Carolina in Greenville, NC.Her research interests include African women’s art, African oral literatures, translation and immigration studies. Her articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures, African Studies Review, the Journal of Pan African Studies.ABA DIOP is a Senegalese master sabar percussionist, vocalist and composer who comes from a lineage of griots ( griot: musicians, oral historians, poets, storytellers) . Aba Diop & the Yermande Family is a music ensemble that consists of Aba Diop (sabar, vocals), Noumoucounda Cissoko (kora, vocals), Samba Ndokh (tama), and Jason Hosier (electric guitar).Amadou Bator Dieng is the founder of  Kirinapost, a pan-African newspaper. He worked as a correspondent for Pan African Music( PAM) in Dakar, Senegal. PAM is an online music magazine in both French and English, dedicated to promoting music from the African continent and diaspora.