m Fatoumata Diawara Secret Garden

Grammy-nominated Malian singer, songwriter, guitarist and actress Fatoumata Diawara’s highly anticipated new album London Ko, which sees Diawara combining forces with collaborator Damon Albarn (Gorillaz, Blur) who co-produces a number of tracks on the album and is featured performing on the first track “Nsera”.

A while ago, the Afro-Cuban die was cast when certain musicians from Cuba and northern Africa felt as if they grooved to a similar drummer. The traditions of that subgenre thrive today as more and more musicians like Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca and Malian guitarist/vocalist Fatoumata Diawara feel inclined to bridge the Altantic through the power of music. Their chance meeting led to a 45 day tour of Europe as a seven-piece band and At Home: Live in Marciac is the resulting album. Right from its opening bars, this album crackles. Fonseca’s clavinet lays down a funky foundation, the crowd begins to clap along on the second and fourth beats, and the entire band are off and running. “Sowa” quickly becomes an Afro-Cuban call to worship. And for her part, Diawara is just getting warmed up.

Secret Garden is a duo composed by Irish violinist Fionnuala Sherry and Norwegian composer and pianist Rolf Lovland. Both managed to win the Eurovision Festival Song Contest 1995 with the composition "Nocturne'. The refined instrumental style of Secret Garden is also accompanied with a select group of instrumentalists alternating in different themes (added guitar and mandolin, harp, bagpipes, oboe, English horn, flute, clarinet, percussion and various vocal effects, whistles and ethereal chorus of voices) along with the Irish Concert Orchestra RTÉ.

Known for their lush and atmospheric, largely instrumental music, the Irish/Norwegian duo Secret Garden rose to fame in the mid-'90s and have since won an international following for their gentle but emotionally evocative sounds, dominated by violin and keyboards and combining notes of Celtic and Norwegian folk, pop, and new age styles. The duo first came together to write and perform the song "Nocturne," which became Norway's winning entry in the Eurovision Song Contest. While they would dabble in vocal music on 2007's Inside I'm Singing and pare back their arrangements on 2013's Just the Two of Us, the sizable majority of their releases saw them remaining loyal to their trademark sound, playing music that touched the hearts and soothed the souls of their many fans around the world. “Storyteller” is the tenth original album from the award-winning Norwegian-Irish act Secret Garden.