Omar Sosa, seckou keita & Gustavo ovalles
transparent water
Omar sosa & seckou keita
SUBA featuring gustavo ovalles
The Atlantic Ocean separates Cuba and Senegal, the respective birthplaces of piano virtuoso Omar Sosa and kora maestro Seckou Keita, a distance diminished by their shared ancestral connection to Africa. When the pair met in 2012, Seckou loved Omar for his musical spirituality, whilst Omar saw in Seckou a rare ability to collaborate but not lose his identity. Their debut album Transparent Water (2017) was hailed as ‘beautiful, rhapsodic… spiritual’ (Songlines) and ‘mesmerising, evocative and sophisticated’ (World Music Central).
Sosa has released over 30 albums during an incredible career that has included nominations for seven GRAMMY or Latin GRAMMY awards; Keita is a multi-award winner, most recently as the prestigious BBC Radio 2 Folk Musician of the Year (2019). Recorded during lockdown and released in October 2021, Sosa and Keita’s second album SUBA is a hymn to hope, to a new dawn of compassion and real change in a post-pandemic world, a visceral reiteration of humanity’s perennial prayer for peace and unity. Joining Omar and Seckou in the studio and for live performances is the inimitable Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles.
SUBA is a co-production between Omar Sosa, Seckou Keita, OTA Records, Theatr Mwldan, and ARC Music Productions International Ltd and is released worldwide on 22 October 2021 in CD and digital formats on the bendigedig label.
For press and media enquiries:
Discover Kharit, the opening track on SUBA
.... AND Allah Léno, the second single from the new album SUBA, to be released worldwide on 22nd October
Transparent water featuring gustavo ovalles
Transparent Water is an exquisitely beautiful new collaboration between the seven-time GRAMMY-nominated pianist, composer and bandleader Omar Sosa from Cuba, and the award-winning Senegalese kora master and singer Seckou Keita.
In Februry 2017 they released their debut album Transparent Water which they toured later that year with percussionist Gustavo Ovalles. Sosa and Keita are both acclaimed musical adventurers with a rich global heritage that spans jazz, latin and African influences; the results of these two artists working together is an incredibly exciting thing to hear.
Transparent Water is the latest example of Omar Sosa’s transcendent determination to seek new combinations, a manifestation of improvisatory freedom and the joy of shared artistic expression with Keita, who won the Songlines Best Album Award 2016 for Africa & Middle East for his solo album 22 Strings alongside a nomination for Best Artist (and has received numerous awards as part of his collaboration with Catrin Finch).
Press on Transparent Water:
“an extraordinary album seamlessly melding Latin American and West African music” 4* Roger Farbey, All About Jazz
“Transparent Water is where world music meets world jazz, where tradition meets improvisation and where the lines of spiritual and earthy meet...The result is stunningly evocative.” TJ Nelson, World Music Central
“Sosa and Keita deliver a work that variously ebbs, flows and sparkles” 4* Jane Cornwell, Jazzwise
